 management of information, this study calls for other researchers who are unfamiliar with the content of the policy or who are diametrically opposed to abolition to re-examine the "anti-democratic" phenomenon. For American researchers hoping to circumvent the unconscious influence of an American cultural mentality, research into Belarus, the only remaining European retentionist country, is highly encouraged as an excellent supplement to the findings of this study.
By eliminating intervening variables present in past studies, this comparative historical analysis of death penalty politics in Great Britain and the United States hopes to move the literature closer to a richer understanding of what explains variation in a Western democracy's retention or abolition of the death penalty. While a few American states will likely abolish death penalty in the coming decade, the politically entrenched regions of the South and Midwest will continue to aggravate the tensions between the United States and Western Europe over this significant policy divergence. “Triggering events” will shine a light on this division and hopefully catalyze meaningful public debate and further academic inquiries on the matter. For example, the Norway gunman Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 84 people in a summer camp in July 2011, served to test and reinforce Europe's newly ingrained principles on the death penalty. When the Norway mass killer received a maximum of 21 years for one of the worst mass shootings in history, outrage over Norway's leniency sparked a cross-Atlantic comparison with another recent notorious murderer James Holmes, who is awaiting trail and possible execution in Colorado for killing 12 people during a Batman movie screening. The coinciding of these two “triggering events” and the subsequent ways the U.S. and European systems handle policies hereafter will provide yet another interesting historical juxtaposition for the continued study of this policy divergence in the Western world.
"1969: MPs Vote to Abolish Hanging." 2013. BBC News On This Day. Accessed January 20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/16/newsid_3258000/3258437.stm.
793 Parl. Deb., House of Commons (5th ser.) (1969) 939-1060. Accessed January 2013. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1969/dec/15/capital-punishment-1.
Amnesty International. 2012. "Death Sentences and Executions 2011." Amnesty International Website. March 26. http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/death-sentences-and-executions-2011.
"A Death Penalty is Petitions Aim." 1972. New York Times, March 19. http://search.proquest.com/docview/119481382?accountid=8285.
Bohm, Robert M. 2003. "American Death Penalty Opinion: Past, Present, and Future." In America's Experiment with Capital Punishment, edited by James R. Acker et al., 27-54. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.
Bush, George H. W. 1991. "Give Back The Streets to America's Families," March 5. CSPAN Video Archives. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/16941-1.
Bickford Smith, R. A. 1965. Letter to the Editor. The Times, February 13.
Cafe, Rebecca. 2011. "Does the public want the death penalty brought back?" BBC News, August 4. Accessed December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14402195.
Clear, Todd R., and George Cole. American Corrections. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.
Death Penalty Information Center. 2013. "History of the Death Penalty." Death Penalty Information Center Website. Accessed January 19. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty.
Death Penalty Information Center. 2013. "International Polls and Studies." Death Penalty Information Center Website. Accessed January 19. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/international-polls-and-studies#ip05.
Death Penalty Information Center. 2013. "An International Perspective." Death Penalty Information Center Website. Accessed January 19. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-international-perspective.
Death Penalty Information Center. 2013. "UN Death Penalty Resolution Backed By Record Number of Countries.” Death Penalty Information Center Website. Ac