U.S. sides with Iran and Sudan?

The major human rights debate at the United Nations this week pitted the European Union, Australia, Brazil and the Philippines against the likes of China, Iran and Sudan. Guess which side the United States fell on?

When the topic turns to the death penalty, the usual pattern at the U.N. -- with secular democracies pressing for greater freedom and respect for human rights, and dictatorships and theocracies accusing them of trying to instill their colonialist ideologies on sovereign nations -- comes apart. That’s because the United States, which tends to lead the struggle for democratic values around the world, is still committing the kind of state-sponsored killing popular among regimes like those of Myanmar and Ivory Coast.

At least 87 countries jointly introduced a draft resolution in the General Assembly this week calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. The General Assembly can’t pass binding resolutions, so even if the vote were unanimous, the moratorium would be voluntary for U.N. member states. The reasons for the move were eloquently expressed in the resolution, and are the same as those that have been cited repeatedly in this country by opponents of capital punishment: The death penalty “undermines human dignity,” there is “no conclusive evidence” of its deterrent value and “any miscarriage or failure of justice in [its] implementation is irreversible and irreparable.”

Representatives of the United States were silent during the first debate on the draft, but this country’s position is well known. Two other initiatives against the death penalty in the 1990s failed in the General Assembly amid opposition from the U.S. and others. Dozens of countries impose capital punishment, but just six -- China, Iran, Iraq, the U.S., Pakistan and Sudan -- account for 90% of the executions. Seldom has this nation kept less distinguished company.

Of course, the U.S. already has a moratorium of sorts on the death penalty. The three dozen states that impose capital punishment -- sadly including California -- are awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court in a Kentucky case challenging that state’s lethal-injection procedures on the grounds that they violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But the delay is only temporary; even if the court forbids the standard method of lethal injection, there are plenty of other drugs and procedures that could be used.

That leaves us to ponder why even “progressive” states like ours continue to tolerate an outdated practice that most developed nations long ago abandoned as ineffective and inhumane. Capital punishment is a relic of an unenlightened past. The United States, or at least California, should join the list of responsible countries that have done away with it.