Stop the Killing Machine.

• Position: Anti-death penalty views gaining worldwide momentum

Anyone who pays attention to the death penalty can feel it. A sea change is under way. Support for the death penalty has fallen to its lowest point in years. It now stands at 63 percent, down from 77 percent five years ago, according to the latest available poll. However, that drops to 46 percent when life in prison is offered as an option. Last September, a bipartisan study showed that 64 percent would favor a moratorium on further executions until "issues of fairness can be resolved."

But the numbers tell only so much. The cultural shift on the death penalty is going on in kitchens and neighborhoods and factories and offices and press rooms across the country, where people are talking about it as they have not since 1976, the year the Supreme Court lifted its ban on executions. Many are looking at capital punishment with newfound horror and sudden doubts.

Among the doubters, some surprises:

Pat Robertson, the rightwing Christian conservative and former Presidential candidate, has called for a federal moratorium on the death penalty. Robertson's reason? He says that capital punishment is discriminatory, unfairly affecting minorities and those who are too poor to pay for good lawyers.

George Will, the conservative columnist for Newsweek and The Washington Post, warns that "careless or corrupt administration of capital punishment" appears to be "intolerably common."

Even President George W. Bush seems to have had second--or first--thoughts on the subject. On June 11, Bush said, "We should never execute anybody who is mentally retarded." As numerous papers reported, the statement led to some confusion about what Bush really believed. As governor of Texas, he opposed bills that would have stopped executions of mentally retarded people, and at least a few of the 152 people whose deaths he oversaw had very low IQs.

While the American public examines its conscience, the U.S. capital punishment system is an enormous embarrassment overseas.

Until recently, U.S. executions got much more attention abroad than they did here. "An average person in France," reported The New York Times, "could not help but be familiar with the case of Betty Lou Beets," who was executed in Texas in February of last year for killing her fifth husband. "Her story, with particular attention to her assertion that she was abused by her father and husbands, has been on the front page of many newspapers."

The same was true, said the Times, of Odell Barnes. French editorialists had penned columns questioning whether Barnes was innocent, and the mayor of Paris even traveled to Texas to meet him. Barnes was executed in March of last year.

In the past few months, the moral isolation of the United States has grown more glaring almost by the day. In April, the...