De VS staat op de vijfde plek als het gaat om het aantal geëxecuteerde gevangenen in 2010.

To be in the company of Iran and China and Sudan as a leader among states conducting execution—and to have pioneered the medicalized or euthanized form of it that is now added to the panoply of gassing, hanging, shooting, and electrocution and known as “lethal injection”—is to have invited the question why. Why is the United States so wedded to the infliction of the death penalty?

Hoe kan dat toch, als modern westers land? Journalist Christopher Hitchens heeft daar wel interessante ideeën over.