es uniquely in the civilized world. The whole matter is summed up by Zimring:
Up until the 1970s, emerging policy trends toward capital punishment seemed similar throughout the developed world, and the United States did not seem out of step with the general trend. In the quarter-century after 1975, however, policy in both the United States and the rest of the developed West has been changing rapidly and in opposite directions. . . .
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the position of the United States on the law and practice of capital punishment is singular. Alone among the Western democracies, state governments in the United States authorize and conduct executions as criminal punishment and show no clear indication of a willingness to stop doing so (Zimring 5).
The history of penal law in the West shows that ethical considerations have always been a part of the discourse of punishment of criminals. So has conflict and debate. Consider that Midway through the Decalogue in Exodus, there is a declaration that could not be more straightforward: Thou shalt not kill. But then almost immediately ambiguity arises as Exodus qualifies the basic statement, for example in the matter of personal injury:
Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death. He, however, who did not hunt a man down, but caused his death by an act of God, may flee to a place which I will set apart for this purpose. But when a man kills another after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my alter and put him to death. . . . A kidnaper, whether he sells his victim or still has him when caught, shall be put to death (Exod. 21.12-16).
The whole ethical question of Thou shalt not kill is further complicated by the unfolding Biblical narrative, for example the fact that the Israelites kill virtually every alien people in their path, even though the Decalogue looms large in their behavior. The point is hat the contradiction ...