The order of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the conviction of Scottish citizen and Ohio death row inmate Kenneth Richey has prompted this editorial in The Herald, a British newspaper:

We should welcome yesterday's ruling. However, in an inverted version of the Biblical parable, we should not rejoice over the one who has (probably) been saved as lament the 3500 who have not. That is the number currently on death row. Since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976, nearly 1000 prisoners have been executed, including a 74-year-old so stricken by dementia that he did not know who he was, and a man with the mental age of seven. The US is up there with China, the Congo, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the global league table of executions, despite scant evidence that capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime. Furthermore, around 3.5% of those sentenced to death in the US have subsequently been proved innocent and DNA technology is likely to increase this percentage.

As governor of Texas from 1995 to 2001, George Bush authorised a record 152 executions and granted just one of 57 appeals for clemency. In Texas, the chances are that, guilty or otherwise, Kenneth Richey would have been dead for years.

Once again, as others see us--America needs to look in the mirror.