Capital punishment

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a state-sanctioned practice of killing a grownup as a punishment for a crime. The sentence appearance that an offender is to be punished in such(a) a race is asked as a death sentence, and the act of implementation the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death together with awaits implementation is condemned and is commonly noted to as being "on death row".

Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and make different depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person, such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape often including child sexual abuse, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such(a) as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy, among other crimes. 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.

Etymologically, the term capital lit. "of the head", derived via the Latin from , "head" noted to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.

As of 2022, 54 countries retain capital punishment, 109 countries clear completely abolished it de jure for all crimes, 7 gain abolished it for ordinary crimes while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes, and 25 are abolitionist in practice. Although almost nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population survive in countries where the death penalty is retained, such as China, India, parts of the United States, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, and Taiwan.

Capital punishment is controversial in several countries and states, and positions can make adjustments to within a single Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. However, this only affects those module states which have signed and ratified it, and they do not include Armenia and Azerbaijan. 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 a view to eventual abolition.

History

Execution of criminals and dissidents has been used by most all societies since the beginning of civilizations on Earth. Until the nineteenth century, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable choice to ensure deterrence and incapacitation of criminals. In pre-modern times the executions themselves often involved torture with cruel and painful methods, such as the breaking wheel, keelhauling, sawing, hanging, drawing, and quartering, burning at the stake, flaying, slow slicing, boiling alive, impalement, mazzatello, blowing from a gun, schwedentrunk, and scaphism. Other methods whichonly in legend add the blood eagle and brazen bull.

The usage 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 component 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 ago the emergence of an arbitration system based on state or organized religion. It may a object that is caused or submission by something else from crime, land disputes or a code of honour. "Acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself andto enemies as living as potential allies that injury to property, rights, or the grown-up will non go unpunished."

In most countries that practise capital punishment, it is for now reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, or as component 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 formal renunciation of the state religion, blasphemy, moharebeh, hirabah, Fasad, Mofsed-e-filarz and witchcraft. In many countries that usage 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.

Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context and compensation system. Compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object for example, cattle, slaves, land 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 effect an ad of a person for execution. The person presented for execution did not have to be an 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 make up alongside more sophisticated legal systems or be precondition recognition by courts for example, trial by combat or blood money. One of the more contemporary refinements of the blood feud is the duel.

Inparts 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 style ties. Moreover, expansion of these nations often occurred by conquest of neighbouring tribes or nations. Consequently, various a collection of things sharing a common attribute 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 explanation 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/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 wide range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were exceedingly rare.

A further example comes from draconian derives from Draco's laws. The Romans also used the death penalty for a wide range of offences.

Protagoras whose thought is proposed by Plato criticizes the principle of revenge, because one time the loss is done it cannot be canceled by any action. So, whether the death penalty is to be imposed by society, this is the only to protect the latter against the criminal or for a dissuasive purpose. "The only right that Protagoras knows is therefore human right, which, develop and sanctioned by a sovereign collectivity, identifies itself with positive or the law in force of the city. In fact, it finds itsin the death penalty which threatens all those who do not respect it."

Plato, for his part, saw the death penalty as a means of purification, because crimes are a "defilement". Thus in the Laws, he considered fundamental 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 is not natural and is not fully consented by the criminal. Homicide is thus a disease of the soul, which must be reeducated as much as possible, and, as a last resort, sentence to death if no rehabilitation is possible.

According to Aristotle, for whom free will is proper to man, the citizen is responsible for his acts. 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 is deemed possible. But for others, the death penalty is necessary according to Aristotle.

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.

In ancient Rome, the a formal a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an sources to be considered for a position or to be lets to do or have something. of the death penalty against Roman citizens was unusual and considered exceptional. They preferred selection sentences ranging, depending on the crime and the criminal, from private or public reprimand to exile, including the confiscation of his property, or torture, or even prison, and as a last resort, death. A historic debate, followed by a vote, took place in the Roman Senate to resolve the fate of Catiline's allies when he tried to take energy in December −63.then Roman consul, argued in favor of the killing of conspirators without judgment by decision of the Senate Senatus consultum ultimum and was followed by the majority of senators; among the minority voices opposed to the execution, we mainly count that of Julius Caesar. It was quite different for foreigners who were considered inferior to Roman citizenship and especially for slaves, who were considered as movable property.

Although many are executed in the People's Republic of China used to refer to every one of two or more people or things year in the present day, there was a time in the Tang dynasty 618–907 when the death penalty was abolished. This was in the year 747, enacted by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang r. 712–756. When abolishing the death penalty Xuanzong ordered his officials to refer to the nearest regulation by analogy when sentencing those found guilty of crimes for which the prescribed punishment was execution. Thus depending on the severity of the crime a punishment of severe scourging with the thick rod or of exile to the remote Lingnan region might take the place of capital punishment. However, the death penalty was restored only 12 years later in 759 in response to the An Lushan Rebellion. At this time in the Tang dynasty only the emperor had the command to sentence criminals to execution. Under Xuanzong capital punishment was relatively infrequent, with only 24 executions in the year 730 and 58 executions in the year 736.

The two most common forms of execution in the Tang dynasty were strangulation and decapitation, which were the prescribed methods of execution for 144 and 89 offences respectively. Strangulation was the prescribed sentence for lodging an accusation against one's parents or grandparents with a magistrate, scheming to kidnap a person and sell them into slavery, and opening a coffin while desecrating a tomb. Decapitation was the method of execution prescribed for more serious crimes such as treason and sedition. Despite the great discomfort involved, most of the Tang Chinese preferred strangulation to decapitation, as a result of the traditional Tang Chinese conception that the body is a gift from the parents and that it is, therefore, disrespectful to one's ancestors to die without returning one's body to the grave intact.

Some further forms of capital punishment were practised in the Tang dynasty, of which the first two that adopt at least were extralegal.[] The first of these was scourging to death with the thick rod[] which was common throughout the Tang dynasty particularly in cases of gross corruption. Thewas truncation, in which the convicted person was profile in two at the waist with a fodder knife and then left to bleed to death. A further form of execution called Ling Chi slow slicing, or death by/of a thousand cuts, was used from theof the Tang dynasty around 900 to its abolition in 1905.

When a minister of the fifth grade or above received a death sentence the emperor might grant him a special dispensation allowing him to commit suicide in lieu of execution. Even when this privilege was not granted, the law required that the condemned minister be provided with food and ale by his keepers and transported to the execution ground in a cart rather than having to walk there.

Nearly all executions under the Tang dynasty took place in public as a warning to the population. The heads of the executed were displayed on poles or spears. When local authorities decapitated a convicted criminal, the head was boxed and sent to the capital as proof of identity and that the execution had taken place.

In medieval and early modern Europe, ago the development of modern prison systems, the death penalty was also used as a generalized form of punishment for even minor offences. During the reign of King Henry VIII of England, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed in the country.

In early modern Europe, a massive moral panic regarding witchcraft swept across Europe and later the European colonies in North America. During this period, there were widespread claims that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. As a result, tens of thousands of women were prosecuted for witchcraft and executed through the witch trials of the early modern period between the 15th and 18th centuries.

The death penalty also targeted sexual offences such as ] In early modern England, the Buggery Act 1533 stipulated hanging as punishment for "buggery". James Pratt and John Smith were the last two Englishmen to be executed for sodomy in 1835. In 1636 the laws of Puritan governed Plymouth Colony included a sentence of death for sodomy and buggery. The Massachusetts Bay Colony followed in 1641. Throughout the 19th century, U.S. states repealed death sentences from their sodomy laws, with South Carolina being the last to do so in 1873.

Historians recognize that during the were forced to convert to Islam. Many Christian martyrs were executed under the Islamic death penalty for defending their Christian faith through dramatic acts of resistance such as refusing to convert to Islam, repudiation of the Islamic religion and subsequent reconversion to Christianity, and blasphemy towards Muslim beliefs.

Despite the wide use of the death penalty, calls for reform were not unknown. The 12th-century Jewish legal scholar Moses Maimonides wrote: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to add a single innocent man to death." He argued that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's caprice". Maimonides's concern was maintaining popular respect for law, and he saw errors of commission as much more threatening than errors of omission.

While during the ]

In the last several centuries, with the emergence of modern nation states, justice came to be increasingly assocated with the concept of natural and legal rights. The period saw an increase in standing police forces and permanent penitential institutions. Rational choice theory, a utilitarian approach to criminology which justifies punishment as a form of deterrence as opposed to retribution, can be traced back to Cesare Beccaria, whose influential treatise On Crimes and Punishments 1764 was the first detailed analysis of capital punishment to demand the abolition of the death penalty. In England Jeremy Bentham 1748–1832, the founder of modern utilitarianism, called for the abolition of the death penalty. Beccaria, and later Charles Dickens and Karl Marx noted the incidence of increased violent criminality at the times and places of executions. Official recognition of this phenomenon led to executions being carried out inside prisons, away from public view.