One of those things that don't seem to have got much mention on the internet, but I found this:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/79406/message/1137986690/Last+two+parts"Carroll O'Connor discussion forum"
He was asked about his favorite show, and he said it was the one he wrote about witnessing an execution. Gillespie went back to the office and they discussed the Constitutional meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment" to which Gillespie responded that the only way you could execute someone without it being cruel is to tell the criminal you are setting him free, and then once the criminal gets a big smile on his face, you shoot him in the back of the head. Mrs. Jimmy Carter wanted a copy of the tape he said, because she was against capital punishment.
All these years later I remember that show. O'Connor's sheriff character was asked, by the convicted man, whom the sheriff had treated fairly or some such, to be one of the witnesses at the execution, and he reluctantly agreed. The sheriff rose and approached the glass window between the observers and the participants, and locked gazes with the convicted man as it happened. After observing the procedure, he said (unfortunately I don't remember the words, and can't find them) that what was cruel and unusual about it was what the person was subjected to leading up to the execution, rather than the execution itself.
As far as I'm concerned, America's love affair with the death penalty makes us a lousy example for the rest of the world.Fortunately, few of the rest of us out here in the world have considered the US to be an example, at least of anything to be emulated, for quite some time. ;)