Capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods.
Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, mass murder, child murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression.
As of 2021, 56 countries retain capital punishment, 111 countries have taken a position to abolish it de jure for all crimes, 7 have abolished it for ordinary crimes, and 24 are abolitionist in practice. Although the majority of countries have abolished capital punishment, over half of the world's population live in countries where the death penalty is retained. As of 2023, only 2 out of 38 OECD member countries allow capital punishment.
Capital punishment is controversial, with many people, organisations, religious groups, and states holding differing views on whether it is ethically permissible. Amnesty International declares that the death penalty breaches human rights, specifically "the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." These rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. In the European Union, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. The Council of Europe, which has 46 member states, has worked to end the death penalty and no execution has taken place in its current member states since 1997. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, throughout the years from 2007 to 2020, eight non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with support for eventual abolition.
History
Execution of criminals and dissidents has been used by nearly all societies since the beginning of civilisations on Earth. Until the nineteenth century, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable alternative to ensure deterrence and incapacitation of criminals. In pre-modern times the executions themselves often involved torture with painful methods, such as the breaking wheel, keelhauling, sawing, hanging, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, crucifixion, flaying, slow slicing, boiling alive, impalement, mazzatello, blowing from a gun, schwedentrunk, and scaphism. Other methods which appear only in legend include the blood eagle and brazen bull.The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history. Most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishments for wrongdoing generally included blood money compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment and execution. In tribal societies, compensation and shunning were often considered enough as a form of justice. The response to crimes committed by neighbouring tribes, clans or communities included a formal apology, compensation, blood feuds, and tribal warfare.
A blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails, or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of an arbitration system based on the state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour. "Acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished."
In most countries that practice capital punishment, it is now reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries, sexual crimes, such as rape, fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, and bestiality carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as Hudud, Zina, and Qisas crimes, such as apostasy, blasphemy, moharebeh, hirabah, Fasad, Mofsed-e-filarz and witchcraft. In many countries that use the death penalty, drug trafficking and often drug possession is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption and financial crimes are punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world, courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.
Ancient history
Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context and compensation systems. Compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, or transfers of property or blood money or in some cases an offer of a person for execution. The person offered for execution did not have to be the original perpetrator of the crime because the social system was based on tribes and clans, not individuals. Blood feuds could be regulated at meetings, such as the Norsemen things. Systems deriving from blood feuds may survive alongside more advanced legal systems or be given recognition by courts. One of the more modern refinements of the blood feud is the duel.File:Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_Bibel_in_Bildern_1860_187.png|thumb|Beheading of John the Baptist, woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860
In certain parts of the world, nations in the form of ancient republics, monarchies or tribal oligarchies emerged. These nations were often united by common linguistic, religious or family ties. Moreover, expansion of these nations often occurred by the conquest of neighbouring tribes or nations. Consequently, various classes of royalty, nobility, various commoners and slaves emerged. Accordingly, the systems of tribal arbitration were submerged into a more unified system of justice which formalized the relation between the different "social classes" rather than "tribes". The earliest and most famous example is Code of Hammurabi which set the different punishment and compensation, according to the different class or group of victims and perpetrators. The Torah/Old Testament lays down the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, practicing magic, violation of the Sabbath, blasphemy, and a range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were exceedingly rare, if they occurred at all.
Describing punishment in the Persian empire, Herodotus mentions approvingly that no-one, not even a slave, can be executed for only a single crime. A Peshotanu was a condemned person in Persia.
Ancient Greece
The Athenian legal system that replaced customary oral law was first written down by Draco in about 621 BC: the death penalty was applied for a particularly wide range of crimes, though Solon later repealed Draco's code and published new laws, retaining capital punishment only for intentional homicide, and only with victim's family permission. The word draconian derives from Draco's laws. The Romans also used the death penalty for a wide range of offences.Protagoras criticised the principle of revenge, because once the damage is done it cannot be cancelled by any action. So, if the death penalty is to be imposed by society, it is only to protect the latter against the criminal or for a dissuasive purpose. "The only right that Protagoras knows is therefore human right, which, established and sanctioned by a sovereign collectivity, identifies itself with positive or the law in force of the city. In fact, it finds its guarantee in the death penalty which threatens all those who do not respect it."
Plato saw the death penalty as a means of purification, because crimes were a "defilement". Thus, in the Laws, he considered necessary the execution of the animal or the destruction of the object which caused the death of a man by accident. For the murderers, he considered that the act of homicide was not natural and was not fully consented to by the criminal. Homicide is thus a disease of the soul, which must be reeducated as much as possible, and, as a last resort, sentenced to death if no rehabilitation is possible.
According to Aristotle, for whom free will is proper to man, a person is responsible for their actions. If there was a crime, a judge must define the penalty allowing the crime to be annulled by compensating it. This is how pecuniary compensation appeared for criminals the least recalcitrant and whose rehabilitation was deemed possible. However, for others, he argued, the death penalty is necessary.
This philosophy aims on the one hand to protect society and on the other hand to compensate to cancel the consequences of the crime committed. It inspired Western criminal law until the 17th century, a time when the first reflections on the abolition of the death penalty appeared.