U.N. Study Assails U.S. Executions as Biased

The application of the death penalty in the United States is tainted by racism, economic discrimination, politics and an excessive deference to victims’ rights, a U.N. human rights investigator reported Friday, as he and a United Nations panel called for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment.

U.S. officials criticized the accuracy and conclusions of the U.N. study, which could fuel the battle between the Clinton administration and conservative Republicans over hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. owes the world body.

While Americans want the United Nations to be an activist organization on some fronts, when it takes on the United States--as happened Friday--it provokes those who question the size and scope of its mission.

Bacre Waly Ndiaye, a lawyer and death penalty expert from Senegal, concluded in his 54-page report that capital punishment as administered in the U.S. operates outside international standards, and, in some instances, in violation of international law.

“In the United States, guarantees and safeguards, as well as specific restrictions on capital punishment, are not being fully respected,” Ndiaye wrote. “Lack of adequate counsel and legal representation for many capital defendants is disturbing. . . . The imposition of death sentences in the United States seems to continue to be marked by arbitrariness. Race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will and who will not receive a sentence of death.”

He noted that the United States is one of only five countries to permit the execution of defendants who committed their crimes while younger than 18, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has signed. The others are Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The report, issued in Geneva at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, is one of a series of U.N. evaluations of civil liberties and rule of law in countries around the world. Most reports focus on well-known human rights violators such as Iran, Iraq and China. But, periodically, the U.N. sends an investigator to a democratic nation.

Many of Ndiaye’s observations echo those of death penalty critics in the United States, but the report places the discussion in an international context. Few other industrial democracies retain the death penalty, and while executions are declining elsewhere around the world, they are on the rise in the United States, even among juvenile defendants, the mentally impaired and women, Ndiaye reported.

The criticism also comes as the U.S. is urging the U.N., and Mary Robinson, its new high commissioner for human rights, to take a tougher line on civil liberties violations around the world.

In Washington, the State Department issued a statement calling the report inaccurate and unfair and said it “fails to recognize properly our extensive safeguards and strict adherence to due process.” The statement also denied that U.S. practices are at variance with international law or treaties.

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Ndiaye’s report was released as the 53-member Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations’ principal human rights assembly, adopted for the second straight year a motion urging a moratorium on executions and calling for recision of capital punishment. The vote was 26 to 13, with 12 abstentions.

The United States joined China, Japan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Indonesia, Congo, Malaysia, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Korea and Sudan in opposition.

“We believe that in a democratic society, the criminal justice system, including the punishments prescribed for the most serious crimes, should reflect the will of the people freely expressed and appropriately implemented,” George Moose, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told the delegates.

But Diann Rust-Tierney, director of the death penalty project for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, said the vote and Ndiaye’s report carry an important message for Americans: “In a larger sense, the U.S. is going to have to abide by an evolving standard of human rights in the world and that means we’re going to be called to answer whether our administration of the death penalty measures up.”

Ndiaye, a former senior official of Amnesty International, has carried out U.N. investigations in Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and other countries. He has monitored the death penalty in America since 1992 and began asking the U.S. government for cooperation in an investigation in 1994.

After several delays, Ndiaye visited the United States from Sept. 21 to Oct. 8, 1997, and included stops in Washington, New York, Florida and California, where he toured San Quentin prison and met with Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks. He reported that San Quentin officials permitted him to visit the prison but refused access to death row inmates he wanted to interview.

Besides citing statistics suggesting that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to minorities and rarely carried out against white defendants who kill blacks, the report asserts that “at least 29 persons with severe mental disabilities have been executed . . . since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.” It also noted that 25 states permit execution of prisoners as young as 16 or 17, although no one younger than 18 has been put to death since reinstatement. Since the death penalty was reinstated, 451 people have been executed.

Ndiaye also cited concerns about the growing victims’ rights movement. “While victims are entitled to respect and compassion, access to justice and prompt redress, these rights should not be implemented at the expense of those of the accused,” he said. “Courts should not become a forum for retaliation.”

The State Department response said U.S. authorities cooperated with Ndiaye “because we have an open criminal justice system and want to encourage other countries to open their doors to these U.N. fact finders.” But it strongly objected to his conclusions, saying: “Our system of criminal justice is one of the fairest in the world.”.

A spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, mocked the report and predicted that it would erode public and congressional support for paying $1.3 billion the United States owes the U.N. in back dues.

“With all the human rights violations in the world, why is the U.N. spending time and money investigating human rights in the United States? It’s a joke,” said Mark Thiessen in a telephone interview from Washington. “This is a perfect example of why people in the United States don’t like the U.N.”

When Ndiaye was touring the U.S. last fall, Helms denounced his investigation as “an absurd U.N. charade.” As Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Helms’ support is crucial if the administration is to win congressional backing for at least partial payment of the U.S. arrears to the U.N.

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Helms coauthored a bill to pay more than $800 million to the U.N. last year but it has been stalled by the insistence of House Republicans on the inclusion of antiabortion language that is unacceptable to the White House. If Helms withdraws his support, it would further imperil the legislation.

If the U.S. fails to pay at least $600 million this year, it could suffer the embarrassment of losing its right to vote in the General Assembly beginning in January. Under U.N. rules, any nation with accumulated debts exceeding two years’ worth of dues loses its vote.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright renewed her call on Congress to make good on the U.S. debt.

U.S. officials said it is important for the United States to set an example of cooperation with U.N. human rights investigators. By failing to do so, the U.S. would place itself in the same category as Cuba, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iraq, Indonesia and other authoritarian governments that refuse entry to the investigators.