The Foreign Service Journal, October 2003

The Chinese make no apology for their widespread use of the death penalty. In answer to criticism from abroad, they say it is a necessary tool for maintaining social stability during a time when their immense and diverse population is undergoing fun- damental change. In addition, the officials I dealt with were fond of reminding their American interlocutors that at least they do not follow our “inhumane” practice of executing juveniles and those with serious mental impairments. Local Death Penalty Cases After returning to Washington in 2000 for my last assignment before retirement, I joined a small group of death penalty activists at my church and in the Northern Virginia chapter of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Drawing on my Foreign Service experience of observing how U.S. domestic issues play out under international scrutiny, I often stress the downside of our executing foreigners, even when done after an assiduously fair judicial process. Aimal Khan Kasi was a vivid example. After being caught in a sting operation in his native Pakistan, to which he fled after killing the two CIA employees in 1993, Kasi was returned to the U.S. and sentenced to death in 1997. He essentially dropped from public attention during the next five years, but as his November 2002 execution date approached, he returned to the spotlight, giving interviews defending the murders he committed. (He also told reporters that although he disapproved of the 9/11 attacks on civilians in New York, he fully supported the attack on the Pentagon, a military target.) By executing Kasi, we sat- isfied his desire for martyrdom and gave him a platform to try to inspire others to emulate him. Was that in the interest of our nation? Unlike Kasi, Zakarias Moussaoui did not directly murder anyone. Even so, he is on trial for his life, essentially for harboring a hatred of America so intense that it allegedly led him to take part in planning the 9/11 attacks. As a foreigner with a belligerent courtroom demeanor, Moussaoui does not elicit the empathy we often feel for Americans on trial for their lives — even those accused of the most heinous crimes — who can cite closer-to-home drug abuse, parental abuse, and other mitigating factors. However his complicated case ultimately turns out, sentencing him to death risks creating yet another U.S.-executed martyr. Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, a Jamaican, arouses even stronger local passions, as the murder spree in which he allegedly took part truly ter- rified the Washington metropolitan region. Though it is understandable that he has received scant public sympathy, the fact that Malvo was only 17 at the time of the crimes (unlike co-defendant John Allen Muhammad) has brought to the fore the arguments for and against applying the death penalty to juveniles. While many argue that the flagrant malevo- lence represented by the Malvo case demonstrates the desirability of capital punishment for juveniles, others contend that his dependency on the much older Muhammad, his deeply troubled childhood in Jamaica, and his apparent lack of mature empathy for others all suggest that he should not be made to pay the ultimate price for his actions. Despite the fact that several of the murders they are charged with took place in Maryland, a state that does not execute minors, Attorney General John Ashcroft determined that the Malvo and Muhammad trials should take place in Virginia, a state that has demon- strated no hesitancy to put juveniles to death. Because of Malvo’s age, the rest of the world looks on this case with particular alarm. (The fact that Malvo and Muhammed, like Kasi and Moussaoui, are Muslims is certainly not lost on the international Islamic com- munity, either.) As many international organizations, including such strange bedfellows as the Chinese State Council Information Office and Amnesty International, have pointed out, the U.S. stands virtually alone in its willingness to execute juveniles and accounts for about 80 percent worldwide of those executed in recent years. Only the United States and Somalia have not ratified the U.N. Convention on Rights of the Child, which pro- hibits death sentences for juveniles. But do such arguments cut much ice, even in the most liberal of Virginia’s counties? Apparently not. Polls show that throughout the state about two-thirds of Virginians support the death penalty as a general propo- sition — though the population is split about 50-50 when offered the alternative of life imprisonment with- F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 As Tip O’Neill might have put it, in America all death penalty issues are local.