PARIS — Even in a region long disdainful of American attitudes toward the death penalty, public officials, editorial writers and activists across Western Europe reacted with fury on Thursday to news that Troy Davis was executed in Georgia on Wednesday night.

Despite the divisive sovereign debt crisis, the sagging economy and conflict in the Middle East, the news media in Britain, France and elsewhere devoted continuous coverage to the Davis case this week, emphasizing that Mr. Davis, a black man, had been convicted of killing a white police officer in a Southern state. Many commentators denounced American justice as brutal and flawed.

More than anything, however, the outcry underlined the profound divergence in opinion concerning capital punishment in the United States and Western Europe, where the death penalty is no longer a topic of debate.