Raymond Forni, the speaker of France's National Assembly,...

Raymond Forni, the speaker of France's National Assembly, slammed the death penalty in the United States at a human rights conference. "There is a stain on America's prestigious image. It's no longer slavery, its no longer organised racial segregation, it's the death penalty. It's as if this country which claims to guide the world wanted to ignore how the world is changing and even oppose its development...It's as if the United States felt proud to be the last Western democracy with the death penalty. We have to be America's guilty conscience so that in the end it is no longer the black sheep of Western democracies," Forni said.