While the US applies the death penalty to mass murderers, Europe will not even debate its return

A gunman who shot dead 11 members of the Jewish community in Pittsburg in the United States has been sentenced to death. Robert Bowers carried out the worst ever anti-semitic attack in American history. A court heard evidence that he spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where congregants had gathered for Sabbath worship. A federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old lorry driver Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended he be put to death for an attack . A judge will formally impose the sentence later.

This is striking outcome, even in the US, which still uses the death penalty, unlike anywhere now in Europe. Many states in the US do not have the death penalty but the sentence that will be applied will depend upon whether of not the defendant is tried in a federal or state court. In most big massacres in recent American history, the attacker has then killed themselves, and so evaded justice. But when such a terrorist is caught, there is wide support for execution, as was the sentence given to Timothy McVeigh, the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber who killed 169 people. The US public would demand the death penalty if any culprit in the September 2001 attacks was convicted.

Is this so wrong? Is the European prohibition on execution so noble? We don’t even debate the matter now in the UK. Here murderers in the Troubles got life sentences but this typically meant about 13 years behind bars – and that was before the 1998 early release scheme. In Norway in 2012, Anders Breivik got that country’s maximum jail term of 21 years for his 2011 massacre of 77 people. He will be free in a decade.

There is a case to be made that such soft sentences are as uncivilised as ending the life of such a calculating offender.