I have read the column by Robert Zeis on the subject of the death penalty. It was honest enough to state that the motive behind seeking a reinstatement of the death penalty in Iowa is the desire for revenge, but no less dismaying for its honesty.

I write from an Amnesty International perspective. No one who has anything to do with Amnesty can suppose it is an organization soft on crime. It has argued and lobbied unceasingly against the impunity which in many countries allows horrific crimes against innocent people to go unpunished. It has been a forceful influence in the move towards an International Criminal Court.

But the death penalty is never a suitable punishment for any crime. It can result in the death of innocent people, it is often arbitrary in its application, it denies any opportunity for reform, it implicates society in the same evil which it claims to address.

The appeal to vengeance as a motive is very misleading. Victims are given false expectations of the satisfactions execution will give them. Revenge belongs to the world of the vendetta, not justice.

Nelson Mandela just a few days ago described the death penalty as ‘barbaric’, and the appeal to the logic of vengeance certainly seems to bypass the hard-won gains of civilized justice systems.

I write from New Zealand. My own Amnesty group spends part of its time working against the death penalty in the US. What you do in the US matters to the rest of the world.

Human rights everywhere are threatened when the world’s leading democracy compromises itself by entanglement in the unedifying business of putting people to death. We hope the legislators of Iowa again refuse such involvement.

Bryan Walker

Amnesty International New Zealand