European rights watchdog says Allen execution 'regrettable'
Europe’s top human rights watchdog reacted with dismay to the execution of California’s oldest inmate today, saying it was regrettable the governor rejected clemency for the man who arranged a triple murder 25 years ago.
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison less than an hour after his 76th birthday ended at midnight local time.
Allen was mostly blind and deaf, could not walk, and suffered a nearly fatal heart attack in September only to be revived and returned to death row. He arranged the three murders in 1980 to silence witnesses in another killing.
“The death penalty is always wrong, but tying a blind 76-year-old man to a chair and injecting him with poison is grotesque,” Council of Europe chairman Terry Davis said in a statement.
“I regret that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has not listened to all the appeals to spare the life of Clarence Ray Allen. As a friend of the United States of America, I look forward to the day this great country will leave the axis of capital punishment.”
Capital punishment is not allowed in Europe, where no execution has been carried out since 1997.
Various European institutions, including the Council of Europe, have pledged to fight for the abolition of executions outside the continent.
“If moral argument is not compelling enough, the American public should compare the murder rate in states which keep the death penalty and states which have abolished it.
"Then they would realise that executing people is not only inhuman, it does not work as a way of reducing the number of murders,” Davis said.
