A frustrating look at death penalty

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THE CONTRADICTIONS OF AMERICAN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

By Franklin E. Zimring

Oxford University Press, $30, 250 pages

REVIEWED BY BRUCE FEIN

As terrorist slaughters of innocent civilians capture headlines, it is altogether fitting that a commanding figure in academia, Law Professor Franklin Zimring, sallies forth with "The Contradctions of American Capital Punishment," a book addressing capital punishment.

What should be done with the likes of Osama bin Laden and his satellite murderers who keenly relish wholesale homicides to further their morally nauseating quest to exterminate human rights and democracy and to enslave women as a tribute to male sexual depravity? What punishment is commensurate with Iraq's reptilian Saddam Hussein's countless crimes against humanity? Should unrepentant Zaccarias Moussouai, on trial for conspiracy to perpetrate the September 11 abominations, face execution if convicted?

Whether anything less than capital punishment for unspeakable crimes would cheapen the lives of the dead was a question confronted after World War II. A resounding "yes" was the answer at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals, and reinforced by the conviction and execution of Adolph Eichmann at Jerusalem. Who could visit Auschwitz, Yad Vashem, and the Holocaust Museum yet lecture a Holocaust orphan that the death sentence for Herman Goering (who circumvented execution by suicide) was morally disreputable? And have you ever seen Amnesty International or the American Civil Liberties Union waving placards protesting the execution of Japan's Hideki Tojo?