More on capital punishment

America magazine offers an overview of the current death penalty situation here. The editorial concludes:

Before his retirement in 1994, the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who had been a supporter of capital punishment, concluded that the death penalty could not be fixed and declared, “I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death.” Since then, “tinkering” on a wide level has led to significant results in lessening the use of and support for the death penalty. In New York and New Jersey, for example, hearings held over many days led state residents to testify overwhelmingly that capital punishment should be abandoned. Meanwhile, four countries account for almost all executions in the world: China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are three. The United States is number four—hardly appropriate company for a nation that wants to be proud of its human rights record.