ABSTRACT
More people are executed in the United States every year than are executed in either Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, countries that have a reputation for using the death penalty liberally. The company America keeps is not flattering. Only China and the Republic of Congo (and possibly Iraq, where the number of executions is difficult to verify), execute more people annually than does the United States. Until very recently, the execution machine in America did not trouble very many people; to be sure, a steady minority has endeavored for around a generation to abolish the death penalty, to bring the United States in line with all other Western democracies, but the majority of Americans have remained somewhere between indifferent and in favor of capital punishment.
