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Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a capital offence or a capital crime. Some jurisdictions that practice capital punishment restrict its use to a small number of criminal offences, principally treason and murder. In recent years in the United States, these have also included killings that occur during the course of some other violent felony, such as robbery or rape. Prisoners who have been sentenced to death are usually kept segregated from other prisoners in a special part of the prison pending their execution. In some places this segregated area is known as "Death Row."
Historically--and still today under certain systems of law--the death penalty was applied to a wider range of offenses, including robbery or theft. It has also been frequently used by the military for looting, insubordination, mutiny, etc.
The term "capital" comes from the Latin capitalis, meaning "head." Thus, capital punishment is the penalty for a crime so severe that it deserves decapitation (losing one's head).
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Methods of execution have varied over time, and include:
In medieval Europe, the method of execution would depend on the social class of the condemned. The nobility would usually be executed in as painless and honorable a method as possible, generally with an axe (which occasionally, gruesomely failed). Those in the working class, serfs, peasants, and possibly the bourgeoisie would usually be executed publicly, in a more gruesome and painful method of execution, typically by hanging or by the wheel. Specific crimes would sometimes warrant specific methods of execution: suspected witchcraft, religious heresy, atheism, or homosexuality would typically be punished by burning at the stake. Unsuccessful regicides generally merited a horrible death.
A wide range of offenses could be punished by death, including robbery and theft, even if nobody was harmed in the action.
Such methods of execution continued into the modern era. In 1757 in France, Robert-François Damiens suffered a horrible but customary execution for his attempted regicide against King Louis XV. His hand, holding the weapon used in the regicide attempt, was burnt, and his body was wounded in several places. Then, molten lead and other hot liquids were poured on the wounds. He was then drawn and quartered, and what remained of his body was burnt at the stake. Inhumane methods of execution and class inequalities were abolished during the French Revolution, which imposed the guillotine, seen as a painless and instantaneous method of execution, for all.
The first country in the world to officially abolish the death penalty was the then-independent Granducato di Toscana (Tuscany). The Grand Duke Leopold II von Hausburg, famous enlighted monarch and future Emperor of Austria, was strongly influenced by the book of the Italian Cesare Beccaria Dei Delitti e Delle Pene ("On Crimes and Punishments"), published in 1764. In this book Beccaria aimed at demonstrating not only the unjustice, but even the futility from the point of view of social welfare, of torture and the death penalty. On 30 November 1786, after having de facto blocked capital executions (the last was in 1769), Leopold promulgated the Reform of the penal code that definitely abrogated death penalty and gave the order to destroy all the instruments for capital execution wherever in his land. In the year 2000 Tuscany's regional authorities instituted a holiday on 30 November of every year to commemorate the event.
See Use of death penalty worldwide for information about all countries
According to Amnesty International's annual report on official judicial execution, in 2003 there were 1,146 executions in 28 countries. 88% of the deaths occurred in five countries. The People's Republic of China (PRC) carried out 726 executions. Iran executed 108 people, the United States 65, Vietnam 64, and Saudi Arabia 52. From 1990 to 2003, the average number of executions per year was 2,242 as reported by Amnesty. The PRC has executed at least 20,000 people between 1990 and 2001, with 1,781 people executed between April and July 2001 in a "Strike Hard" crime crackdown.
Phyllis Schlafly provides a much higher count of executions in China than Amnesty International:
According to the United Nations Secretary-General's quinquennial report on capital punishment, the highest per capita use of the death penalty is in Singapore, with a rate of 13.57 executions per one million population for the period of 1994 to 1999. The death penalty is metted out for what is considered the most serious of offences. Out of 138 persons sentenced in the period from 1999 to 2003, 110 were for drug-related offences, while the rest for murder and arms-related offences. Executions by hanging occur on Friday mornings in Changi prison. They are seldom publicized.
In most countries that have capital punishment, it is used to punish only murder or war-related crimes. In some countries, like the People's Republic of China, some non-violent crimes, like drug and business related crimes, are punishable by death.
Most democratic countries today have abolished the death penalty, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, almost all of Europe, and much of Latin America. Among western countries, the first to abolish capital punishment was Portugal. The last execution in Portugal took place in 1846, and this punishment was officially and definitely abolished in 1867. The last execution in the Republic of Ireland took place in 1954 and in 1990 capital punishment was removed from the penal code. A heated debate on whether to reintroduce capital punishment led in 2001 to a referendum which amended the Irish Constitution to make reintroduction of the death penalty unconstitutional. The Republic of Ireland thereby became one of the first countries in the world to constitutionally ban the death penalty by popular referendum, with Switzerland having constitutionally forbidden it in 1999, though it had been abolished "in time of peace" in 1937. The Dutch Parliament in 1983 amended the Dutch Constitution, adding that 'Capital punishment may not be imposed.' Capital Punishment during peacetime in the Netherlands was already abolished in 1870. The last execution in the United Kingdom occurred in 1964 (see Capital punishment in the United Kingdom). Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 2001. In all, 80 countries have abolished it altogether, 22 countries have not executed someone in the last ten years, and 14 only have the death penalty for "exceptional crimes" (e.g., war crimes). Many other countries retain it, especially in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean, including Japan and the United States, with a total of 78 countries still having the death penalty.
The most comprehensive source lists less than 15,000 people executed in the United States or its predecessors between 1608 and 1991.[2] (http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm) More accurate statistics list 4661 executions in the U.S. in the period 1930-2002 with about 2/3 of the executions occurring in the first twenty years.[3] (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm) Additionally the U.S. Army executed 160 soldiers between 1930 and 1967. The last U.S. Navy execution was in 1849. (See also: Capital punishment in the United States)
Only seven countries practice the death penalty for juveniles, that is criminals aged under 18 at the time of their crime. Nearly all actual executions for juvenile crime take place in the USA, although, due to the slow process of appeals, no one under age 19 has been executed recently.[4] (http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm) [5] (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=27&did=206) In the United States the death penalty cannot be applied to criminals under age 16 and higher ages are legislated in many states. In the United States and ancestor bodies politic since 1642, an estimated 364 juvenile offenders have been put to death by states and the federal government. Although the People's Republic of China accounts for the vast majority of executions in the world, it does not allow for the executions of those under 18. [6] (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=27&did=206) Execution of those aged under age 18 has occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Iran since 1990. [7] (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=27&did=208)
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles, has been signed by all countries except the USA and Somalia, so it is likely that legally, the execution of persons for crimes committed as children (as defined by the Convention) will be restricted to the USA.
There are a number of international conventions prohibiting the death penalty, most notably the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, such conventions only bind those that are party to them; customary international law permits the death penalty.
Several international organizations have made the abolition of the death penalty a requirement of membership, most notably the European Union and the Council of Europe. The European Union requires outright abolition of the death penalty by states wishing to join; the Council of Europe also requires this, but is willing to accept a moratorium as an interim measure. Thus, while Russia is a member of the Council of Europe, and practices the death penalty in law, it has not made use of it since becoming a member of the Council.
The same was also true of Turkey, but in August 2002, as a move towards EU membership, the death penalty was removed from law as well as practice, but only during peacetime. On November 12, 2003, Turkey ratified the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. In January 2004 Turkey signed the 13th Protocol, intending to abolish the death penalty completely, including during wartime [8] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3384667.stm). In May 2004 Turkey amended its constitution, removing the death penalty for all crimes. As a result of this, Europe is a continent free of the death penalty in practice (all states having ratified the Sixth Protocol), with the sole exception of Belarus, which is not a member of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has also been lobbying for the Council of Europe observer states who practice the death penalty (namely the United States and Japan) to be told to abolish it also or lose their observer status.
Support for the death penalty varies widely from nation to nation, and it can be a highly contentious political issue, particularly in democracies that use it. A majority of adults in the United States appear to support its continuance (though like most political issues, the numbers vary widely depending on the exact question asked), but a highly vocal, organised minority of people in that country do not, and non-governmental organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch lobby against it globally. In Taiwan, the death penalty appears to have large amounts of public support, and there is little public movement to abolish it. By contrast, in most of Western Europe, public opinion majoritarily regards capital punishment as barbaric and there is little public support for its reinstatement. In countries where it has been abolished, debate is sometimes revived by particularly brutal murders, though few countries have brought it back after abolition.
Some of the major arguments used by those opposed to the death penalty include:
Key arguments for supporters of the death penalty include:
There is ongoing debate whether capital punishment reduces crime rates, because potential murderers (or other criminals) would be too scared of punishment to commit crime, or it doesn't affect crime rate, because potential criminals think that they won't be caught, so they don't care about punishment until it's too late. There are even studies that have concluded that the death penalty appears to encourage murder. However, like many questions in the social sciences, actual research data on this question can be (and is) interpreted very differently by people with differing predispositions towards capital punishment. In any event, the actual effectiveness or otherwise of it is largely irrelevant to many who feel strongly about the debate, as their views are based on other factors.
The Tanakh prescribes the death penalty for a great many violations of law. Most historians no longer accept the view that the laws of the Bible, as written, were ever actually followed as a legal code. Instead, they hold that the laws in the Bible were developed in a living society and culture, and that the oral law of this society was not identical to what one would posit from a literal reading of the Biblical text alone. Rabbinic Jews have always held this view; Judaism holds that a specific oral law (later redacted in the Talmud) explains the meaning and context of these Biblical laws. In this view the death penalty was rarely used, and exceedingly difficult to carry out.
The Jewish view of all laws in the Bible, not just the death penalty, is based on the reading of the Bible as seen through Judaism's corpus of oral law. These oral laws were first redacted around 200 CE in the Mishnah and later around 550 CE in the Talmud.
These laws make it clear that the death penalty was only used in extremely rare cases. Rabbinic law developed a detailed system of checks and balances to make sure that the penalty could only be carried out if there were two witnesses to the crime, if the witnesses then verbally warned the person that they were liable for the death penalty, and that the person then had to acknowledge that he/she was warned, but then went ahead and committed the sin regardless. Further, an individual was not allowed to testify against themselves. As such, the death penalty was effectively legislated out of existence.
In Conservative Judaism, the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards approved a 1960 responsa by Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser on capital punishment. It states, in part:
Jesus underwent the death penalty by crucifixion. His trial was affected by popular opinion. His death is frequently depicted in religious art, and the cross, either with or without his body on it, is the primary symbol of Christianity. Christians believe that his death was punishment for the sins of the world and brings about their redemption.
Christians are divided on the issue of capital punishment - some are in favour, some are against it under all circumstances. Liberal Christian groups tend to oppose it while most conservative Christian groups oppose it. The Amish and Mennonites are two conservative Christian groups that are known for their opposition
Those in favour of capital punishment often point to passages in the Old Testament that advocate the death penalty such as Genesis 9 which states, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man."
Those against capital punishment often point to passages in the New Testament that advocate love, forgiveness and mercy. In Matthew 5 Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also... "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven."
In John 8, a story is told of a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. The Old Testament Law demanded that she be put to death, however, Jesus saves her life against the teachers of Law when he tells them that who-ever is without sin should throw the first stone. He later tells the woman to go and sin no more... Because the theme of the Bible is man's redemption through repentence to Christ, some Christians argue that by executing a murderer we are cutting short his life and taking away his opportunity to repent. Some conservative Christian groups who believe in a literal Hell argue that without repentance, all who die automatically go there. They argue that many serial killers, most notably, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy became born again Christians in prison.
There is no clear consensus among Christians regarding the death penalty. It is interesting to note that most church denomination
outside the United States, officially are opposed to the death penalty. In countries such as Australia and those of Western
Europe, most Christians are probably opposed to capital punishment. Within the United States, there is strong support for the
death penalty, especially by Christians in the southern states.
A Muslim may be sentenced to death under Shariah, Islamic law, for the murder of a Muslim, adultery if there are four witnesses, apostasy (deserting Islam), a third conviction for drinking alcohol and a fifth conviction for theft. A dhimmi (zimmi, non-Muslim living in an Islamic state) can be executed for sex with a Muslim woman, and "persecution" of Islam, for example blasphemy against Allah or Prophet Muhammad, or attempting to proselytise, i.e. convert a Muslim from his religion.
Shariah is not in force in many countries with a Muslim majority, especially those which still have laws on their statute books which date from their colonial pasts. One of the aims of Islamic fundamentalists is to re-introduce Shariah.
The following quote from the 14th Dalai Lama is indicative of the thought of Buddhists over the last 2,500 years:
However, most of the nations that have historically been Buddhist, including the People's Republic of China,Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan (the Republic of China), and Thailand, retain the death penalty and have long considered the death penalty quite appropriate punishment for heinous crimes.
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