For proponents of the death penalty, these past few months have not been the best for the cause.

This video image released by Iraqi state television shows Saddam Hussein's guards wearing ski masks and placing a noose around the deposed leader's neck moments before his execution. (IRAQI TV/ Associated Press)

Even before the ugliness that surrounded the execution of Saddam Hussein — during which he was taunted by his guards and had his hanging covertly filmed by someone using a cellphone camera — capital punishment was becoming the subject of much more intense public debate all over the world.

A botched execution in Florida in mid-December led outgoing Republican governor Jeb Bush, a strong proponent of the death penalty, to halt all executions, pending a full public inquiry into lethal injections, which proponents claim to be the most humane of all of the many practices.

In the botched incident, Angel Diaz, a 55-year-old man who had been convicted of murder 27 years ago, was given an injection that should have killed him within 15 minutes. Instead, he lay twitching and grimacing on the gurney for 34 minutes before he died, and then only after Florida prison officials gave him a second injection.

The Diaz case emboldened capital punishment opponents in Florida to push for full abolition, and in this they were not alone. In New Jersey, a special commission issued a report recommending that the state abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The report has been endorsed by the Governor Jon Corzine, and if acted upon, would make New Jersey the first U.S. state to abolish the death penalty since that country's Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The U.S. Supreme Court has gone back and forth on capital punishment over the past 70-odd years. Later this month, it is to hear appeals on no fewer than three death penalty cases from Texas. That state has executed far more inmates than any other American state.

The unusually high number of appeals — all questioning matters of law and legal fairness — has led even legislators in Texas to talk of reforming the practice.

Worldwide moratorium?

BY THE NUMBERS

Countries that have abolished capital punishment for all crimes 88

For all but exceptional crimes 11

Death penalty but no executions for decade or more 29

Countries that continue to carry out executions 69

Number of countries that executed someone in 2005 22

Number of people executed in 2005 2,148

Number sentence to death in 2005 5,186

Source: Amnesty International

Within the U.S., the capital punishment debate seems to be operating on its internal springs. However, even there, support is down, depending on how you measure it.

A recent Gallup poll found 65 per cent of Americans supported the death penalty, down from 80 per cent in 1994. But given the choice of life in prison without parole as the alternative, slightly more chose that option (48 per cent) than execution (47 per cent).

Around the world, though, the death penalty debate appears to be gaining a push from the Saddam hanging, as well as from a few other high-profile incidents.

(Within the abolitionist community, there has been intense interest in the apparently growing number of state executions in China, the handful of teenagers put to death in Pakistan and Iran and the decision by prosecutors in Libya to seek the death penalty for five health-care workers from Bulgaria. The workers are accused of poisoning 400 schoolchildren with AIDS, ostensibly as part of a CIA-sponsored program to destabilize the radical Arab regime.)

Because of the way the Saddam execution transpired, Italy is now challenging the European Union to back a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty, and to push this moratorium at the UN, where Italy is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

Momentum is clearly on the side of abolition, at least for criminal or religious offences. (Some countries maintain the death penalty only for such state crimes as treason, espionage or desertion.)

As Amnesty International reports, in 1977, there were only 16 countries — Canada among them — that had banned the death penalty. Today, there are 88 and the list is growing.

The Philippines was the most recent country, in June 2006, to abolish executions. At the time, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo commuted over 1,200 death sentences to life imprisonment, one of the largest commutations of its kind.

At the same time, however, Asia (along with the U.S., Iran, Saudi Arabia and, recently, Iraq) is probably the hardest nut to crack when it comes to placing a moratorium on the death penalty.

Southeast Asia records the highest number of executions in the world, according to Amnesty International. This is mainly due to China. That country put to death at least 1,770 people in 2005, according to published reports, though these are said to be only a fraction of the real number.

But even a Western-leaning country such as Japan executed four people last month after a 15-year respite. South Korea is another that still has the death penalty on its books: 900 people have been executed there since 1948, though none in the last decade.

Quieted voices

Saddam's macabre fate has clearly challenged people's moral positions and sparked a new round of debate. But this is often a very slippery one.

Consider the British position: As Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said, "We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime. We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."

Or the Canadian one. Canada just passed the 30th anniversary of abolishing the death penalty. (Capital punishment for military crimes was done away with in 1998.) But there has been no official statement from the Canadian government on the execution of Saddam or on the European movement towards a worldwide moratorium.

Even the UN seems to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth on this issue. Because of its official position of respect for the basic principle of right to life, the UN has been opposed to capital punishment, even for war crimes.

But the body's new Secretary General (former South Korean foreign minister) Ban Ki-moon, noting Saddam was responsible for committing "unspeakable atrocities" against his own people, went on to say: "We should never forget the victims of his crimes. The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

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