de it harder for death-row inmates to challenge the system. That system has scheduled 19 more Texas executions between now and Election Day. Gary Graham, slated to die June 22, was convicted on the basis of one sketchy eyewitness account when he was 17. The absence of multiple witnesses would make him ineligible for execution in the Bible ("At the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death"-Deuteronomy 17:6); and Graham's age at the time he was convicted of the crime in 1981 would make him too young to be executed in all but four other nations in the world. Americans might not realize how upset the rest of the world has become over the death penalty. All of our major allies except Japan (with a half dozen executions a year) have abolished the practice. Only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Congo execute more than the United States. A draft version of the European Union's Bill of Rights published last week bars EU countries from extraditing a suspected criminal to a country with a death penalty. (If approved, this could wreak havoc wrath international law enforcement). Admission to the EU is nowcontingent on ending capital punishment, which mill force Turkey to abolish its once harsh death-penalty system. The execution of juvenile offenders is a particular sore spot abroad. The United States has 73 men on death row for crimes committed when they were too young to drink or vote (mostly age 17); 16 have been executed, including eight in Texas. That's more than the rest of the world combined. So far, opposition abroad has had little ef feet at home. What changed the climate in the United States was a series of cases in Illinois. The story traces back to the convictions of four black men, two of whom were condemned to die. for the 1978 murders of a white couple in the Chicago suburb of Ford Heights. In the early 1980s, Rob Warden and Margaret Roberts, the editors of a crusading legal publication called The Chicago Lawer, turned up eviden...
