How about focusing on differences _within_ America, regionally and historically? Let's forget about foreign countries.
Regrettably Ohio just executed a prisoner, but, generally speaking, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Northwest, along with Hawaii and Alaska, are more anti-death penalty than the South, the West, the Southwest, for instance if one goes by the number of executions since 1977. Among the pro-death penalty states, Texas, Virginia, and Florida lead, with other Southern states following them. The more anti-union and pro-white supremacy your region is, the more likely your state is to make use of _capital punishment_. On the other hand, the more pro-union and pro-social welfare states tend not to have death penalty or if they have it, they use it sparingly. See state-by-state info at <http://www.smu.edu/~deathpen/summary.html> and <http://www.essential.org/dpic/firstpage.html>. (It's strange that Social Democrat Max doesn't seem to notice this correlation between degrees of anti-death penalty and social democracy.) Mix this social democracy index with race, and you get an argument that death penalty is a method that benefits the ruling class by turning the white working class into a Lynch Mob and away from Organized Labor & Social Welfare. Capital Punishment is a punishment of Labor by Capital. Max, you wanna turn D.C. into a Lynchburg?
Yoshie