The death penalty will be abolished. It's just a matter of time now." So said Mike Farrell, star of M*A*S*H and a leading opponent of the death penalty, in a recent visit to Santa Fe. Such words a decade ago might have rung hollow. But now they strike a loud chord. New Jersey's abolishing the death penalty this past January fills the air with hope.

We draw hope, too, from Illinois. A few years ago the governor put a moratorium on executions because he regarded the process of capital punishment as "arbitrary, capricious and therefore immoral." The governor commuted the sentences of the 167 prisoners condemned to die in his state, most to life without parole. My own state, New Mexico, may be next in putting this barbaric injustice behind us.

New Mexico -- a land long ago roamed by fierce conquistadors and in the 1800s full of hangin' trees and frontier justice and today home to the nuclear industry-- last conducted an execution in 2001. It was the first in 41 years. Today two men languish on death row, one at the remote state prison not far from where I live.

The state legislature nearly has the votes to put executions to an end. Death penalty opponents, me among them, have met with Governor Bill Richardson and urged him to sign. But each year he employs a procedural tactic to keep the bill in limbo. Should he leave office early next year to accept a role in the new presidential administration, Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish has promised to affix her name. (see: www.nmrepeal.org)

Only the United States among the Western nations puts criminals to death. More than 40 countries have abolished the practice since 1976. During those same 32 years the United States has executed 1,100. At the moment, there are 3,263 prisoners nationwide waiting to die.

A breeze of hope billowed recently as the Supreme Court "investigated" the humaneness of lethal injection -- this in an air of marked public opinion. According to polls, most Americans support alternatives to the death penalty. Most favor life without parole along with restitution to the victims' families. But the breeze of hope passed; last month executions resumed.

Our national barbarity strikes me most sharply whenever I travel to Europe. There the people I meet loquaciously express dismay at American notions of justice. Especially in Italy. Catholic groups in Italy regularly hold conferences and prayer vigils against our capital punishment. Every time someone is executed, the lights of the Coliseum in Rome are illuminated all night. Here is a symbolic gesture to set us blushing, a censure lighting the dark: namely, American jurisprudence bears resemblance to the savage Roman Caesars'.

With their dour appraisal, I readily subscribe. Capital punishment can claim nothing to commend it. It will not bring healing or justice or restitution. It offers no hope for a nonviolent society. It reinforces the heart-rending cycle of violence; it lays the burden of yet another murder. Execution gives death as social purpose ever greater sway. When a nation decides who lives, who dies, it becomes small potatoes indeed for it to manipulate who enjoys full civil rights, who doesn't, who partakes of the fat of the suburbs, who subsists in the crumbling cities. And of course who goes off to war to fatten the American way of life, and who remains home to pluck the fat fruit and pursue affluent careers.

More, capital punishment is freighted with inconsistencies. Behind it lies an illogical maxim: we kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong. If we really believed that killing was wrong, the state would set an example; official killing would be banished.