Capital Punishment

I

Introduction

Capital Punishment, legal infliction of the death penalty; in modern law, corporal punishment in its most severe form. Lynching, in contrast to capital punishment, is the unauthorized, illegal use of death as a punishment. The usual alternative to the death penalty is long-term or life imprisonment.

II

History

The earliest historical records contain evidence of capital punishment. It was mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi (1750 bc). The Bible prescribed death as the penalty for more than 30 different crimes, ranging from murder (Exodus 21:12) to fornication (Deuteronomy 22:13). The Draconian Code of ancient Greece went further, imposing capital punishment for every offence.

In England, during the reigns of King Canute and William the Conqueror, the death penalty was not used, although the results of interrogation and torture were often fatal. By the end of the 15th century, English law recognized seven major crimes: treason (grand and petty), murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. By 1800, more than 200 capital crimes were recognized, and, as a result, 1,000 or more people were sentenced to death each year (although most sentences were commuted by royal pardon). In the American colonies before the War of Independence, the death penalty was commonly authorized for a wide variety of crimes. Blacks, whether slave or free, were threatened with death for many crimes that were punished less severely when committed by whites.

III

The Reform Movement

Efforts to abolish the death penalty did not gather momentum until the end of the 18th century; in Britain and the United States this reform was led by the Quakers (Society of Friends). In Europe, a short treatise, On Crimes and Punishments (1764), by the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, inspired influential thinkers such as the French philosopher Voltaire to oppose torture, flogging, and the death penalty. Encouraged by the writings of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, Britain repealed all but a few of its capital statutes during the 19th century. Several states in the United States (led by Michigan in 1847) and a few countries (beginning with Venezuela in 1853 and Portugal in 1867) abolished the death penalty entirely.

Where complete abolition could not be achieved, reformers concentrated on limiting the scope and mitigating the harshness of the death penalty. However, the reform movement succeeded in Britain in 1965 after a number of dubious and even manifestly wrong executions, carried out by hanging, in the previous two decades. In one case a posthumous pardon was issued. Since then there have been regular and determined attempts to restore the death penalty, but they have been rejected in Parliament. A series of miscarriages of justice in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s in what would have been capital crimes emphasized the dangers of executing the innocent and made the return of the death penalty unlikely. It was the punishment for piracy and treason until the death penalty for these offences was revoked in 1998.

IV

Methods of Execution

The death penalty has been inflicted in many ways now regarded as barbaric and forbidden by law almost everywhere: crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing asunder, stoning, and drowning are examples.

In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of five ways: hanging (the traditional method of execution throughout the English-speaking world), electrocution (introduced by New York State in 1890), the gas chamber (adopted in Nevada in 1923), firing squad (used only in Utah), or lethal injection (introduced in 1977 by Oklahoma). In most nations that still retain the death penalty for some crimes, hanging or the firing squad are the preferred methods of execution. In some countries that adhere strictly to the traditional practices of Islam, beheading or stoning are still occasionally employed as punishment.