[Martin Aigner]

I might be wrong, but as far as I know the reason for A.S. to be upset with Austria (and particulary Graz) was, that there not only was lots of critisism for him not using his power as govenor to pardon the guy. It even went so far that some politicians wanted to have his Austrian citicenship terminated (he has both, Austrian and US citizenship). The politicians who suggested this were, as far as I know, not leading members of any party in Austria, but local unknown local politicians. Probably they saw their chance for their own 15 minutes of fame. Nobody but A.S. really took them seriously. It might be that he was sort of upset that some unimportant politicians criticised the governor of California. Anyway, to tell the truth, not too many people really cared that his name was taken from the stadium. Actually, for marketing reasons it´s even better this way, since A.S. didn´t pay for his name to be put on the stadium, and now it´s possible to find some company to pay for it (quite common in Germany these days).

What really hurts Graz a little bit is, that A.S. doesn´t allow Graz to use his name for any other marketing possibilities either.

Anyway, to understand the reasoning for Austrians (and other Europeans) to be upset about his decision one probably has to grow up in a society where death penatly is a big NO. Due to a higher socialistic influence in politics, there is less violence on average in society in Europe. A couple of years before you didn´t find any street gangs or "dangerous areas" the way you do in the US. Of course we had to pay the price for it in higher taxes. These days, this isn´t that true anymore in some states in Europe (see e.g. the riots in the suburbs of Paris). There are different reasons for this, such as a bad economy, especially in Germany; lots of immigrants without proper arrangements for integrations; cutting the social contributions from the state due to less money (due to bad economy), ... . Still, without knowing the figures (and being too lazy to google them) I´m sure that there are still way less killings and other serious assaults in Europe than in the US. Therefore the call for death penalties isn´t nearly as strong as it is in the US. Maybe, and we all hope that it will never occur, there would be a call for death penalty if we had the same statistical numbers regarding serious assaults as the US. But I seriously doubt that a capital punishment does or can change the likeihood of any crime.

One other thing to consider, why Europeans are against the decission of AS is that the US lately has become to be known as a state who kicks at human rights whenever it fits their opinion. Now one can argue that there are way worse countries than the US (China, Russia, North Korea, ....) regarding human rights, but there is a huge difference: The US was some sort of example for Europe, the US freed us from the Nazis, the US was our strong partner against the Eastern Bloc. Now these days there is a huge gap between Europe and the US (due to tons of reasons). If A.S. had shown any mercy on that guy (and all the other people on death row so far and to be), it would have had some sort of symbolic character for Europeans. Since he didn´t pardon that guy, this fits once again in the above mentioned gap between Europe and the US.

One last thing: Of course we know that there are people on death row on lots of states of the US, but California is, at least for us Austrians, the state we follow the most.

Martin Aigner