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Execution (legal)

Execution (legal)

Color Key:

Blue: Abolished for all crimes
Green: Abolished for crimes not committed in exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in time of war)
Orange: Abolished in Practice
Red: Legal Form of Punishment

]] Execution is a term used to refer to the termination of life pursuant to a judgment at law (see Capital punishment), and more broadly to killings with legal or quasi-legal justifications given, and to extrajudicial killings. Once used in referring to the execution of any legal sentence ("execute" meaning "to carry out fully : put completely into effect"), and applied as such to the execution of a death sentence (by an executioner), it has come to be used to refer to the act of killing itself. Formal military executions are typically by firing squad (for violations of orders in wartime or the laws of war) or by hanging (typically for cowardice, or commission of atrocities or other crimes). Methods of execution which involve, or have the potential to involve, a great deal of pain or mutilation are considered to be torture and unacceptable to many who support capital punishment. The term is also used to refer to illegal killings, such as the killing of prisoners of war (see Summary execution) and hostages, political assassinations and gang murders.

Execution through history

- Crushing by elephant was a common sentence for those condemned to death throughout south and southeast Asia, particularly India, for over 4,000 years.
- From 600 BC through the 20th Century crucifixion has been used as a method of execution.
- The execution of criminals was a form of entertainment in ancient Rome. Usual forms of execution included burning at the stake, crucifixion, or ad bestias (when the prisoner is left alone in the ring with one or more wild animals).
- Between 1283 and 1871, men convicted of treason in England were hanged, drawn and quartered, while women found guilty of treason were burnt at the stake.
- The headman's axe was used in Germany and England in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
- The French Revolution is famous for its pioneering of the guillotine.

Books

- Geoffrey Abbott - Execution: A Guide to Ultimate Penalty (2004)

External links

- [http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm Before the Needles, Executions in America Before Lethal Injection, Details of thousands of historic executions and lynchings]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2365751.stm Account of an execution]
- [http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/execution_tapes/ Full execution Tapes]

Civil law

In the context of civil law, execution is the process of enforcing a judgment for money damages. Processes available for execution include garnishment, attachment, and levy. Category:Death penalty Category:Human rights abuses Category:Violence ja:刑罰の一覧 simple:Execute

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a crime (often called a capital offence or a capital crime), or as a deterrent to crime. Historically, it was most frequently used as a means to suppress political enemies, but it was sometimes considered a form of public entertainment as well. In modern democratic societies it can be used as a tool for political advancement of government officials, as a public display of intolerance of crime. Crimes that earn the death penalty vary greatly from treason and murder to theft. In militaries around the world, courts-martial have sentenced capital punishments also from cowardice, desertion, insubordination and mutiny.

Terminology

The term "capital" derives from the Latin caput, literally meaning "head".^{[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=capital]} Thus, capital punishment is the penalty for a crime so severe that it 'deserves' death, either by decapitation or otherwise. Prisoners who have been sentenced to death are usually kept segregated from prisoners who have not been sentenced to death in a part of the prison known as "death row" pending their execution.

Methods of execution

death rows. The electric chair was developed in the late 1880s by a dentist with support from Thomas Edison (who had a financial interest in having direct current used in providing electricity, whereas the electric chair uses alternating current) and is still in use today.]] Methods of execution have varied over time, and include:
- Asphyxiation (or strangulation), such as by Garrotte
- Blood eagle (possibly a myth)
- Boiling to death
- Burning, especially for religious heretics and witches on the stake
- Brazen bull
- Breaking on the Wheel
- Burial (alive, also known as the pit)
- Crucifixion
- Crushing by a weight, abruptly or as a slow ordeal - see also animals
- Decapitation, or beheading (as by sword, axe or guillotine)
- Disembowelment
- Dismemberment
- Disruption (a form of dismemberment)
- Drawing and quartering (Considered by many to be the most "cruel" of punishments)
- Drowning
- Electric chair
- Explosives
- Exsanguination
- Flaying (skinning)
- Fustuarium - see also for not always lethal successors
- Gassing
- Hanging
- Impalement
- Lethal injection
- Iron Maiden
- Keelhauling (not always lethal) and walking the plank (if not fictitious)
- Pressing
- Poisoning
- Sawing
- Scaphism and similar methods mentioned there
- Shooting can be performed either
- by Firing squad
- by a single shooter (such as the neck shot, often performed on a kneeling prisoner, as in present PR China in significant numbers)
- (especially collectively) by cannon or machine gun
- Snake pit
- Starvation and Dehydration
- Stoning
- Various animal-related methods
- Tearing apart by horses, e.g. Ancient China (using five horses) or "quartering," with four horses, and in The Song of Roland
- Attack/devouring by animals, such as dogs or wolves, as in Ancient Rome and the Biblical lion's den, by rodents (such as rats), by carnivorous fish (such as sharks), by crabs or by insects (such as ants)
- Poisonous bites from scorpions, snakes, spiders etcetera
- Crushing by elephant or trampling by a herd or by horsemen, as practiced by the Mongolian hordes

Scope of use

Some jurisdictions still practicing capital punishment restrict its use to a small number of criminal offences, principally murder, treason and equated mortal sins such as apostasy. Historically—and still today under certain systems of law—the death penalty was applied to a wider range of offences, including robbery or theft and kidnapping. It has also been frequently used by the military for crimes including looting, insubordination, and mutiny. Armies based on conscription have used death penalty as means of motivation (see coercion) and keeping discipline.

History

Traditionally capital punishment has been a method to deliver human sacrifices to deities. For example the judicial hanging was originally a sacrificial rite to Odin. Scandinavian pagan religions demanded human sacrifices not only by hanging, but also by drowning the convict into marsh (see Tollund man); also Kalevala contains a chapter where Väinämöinen sentences the fatherless Son of Marjatta to be drowned into marsh. The purpose of capital punishment can also be seen as means to placate wrathful deities and divert their anger and hatred away from the people and towards the victim. Some Pagan religions also used burning the condemned at the stake; the last recorded such sacrificial burning occurred in Lithuania 1389. 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 either sword or an axe (which occasionally failed gruesomely). 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. In Scandinavia, the noblemen were beheaded with sword and commoners with axe. 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 offences could be punished by death, including robbery and theft, even if nobody was physically 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. However, during The Terror, other forms of execution, such as massed cannon fire and mass drownings, were also used. Although the death penalty was briefly banned in China between 747 and 759, the first country in the world to officially and permanently abolish the death penalty was the then-independent Granducato di Toscana (Tuscany). The Grand Duke Leopold II of Habsburg, famous enlightened 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 to demonstrate not only the injustice, 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 abrogated the death penalty and gave the order to destroy all the instruments for capital execution wherever in his land. In 2000 Tuscany's regional authorities instituted an annual holiday on 30 November to commemorate the event. Public executions in early New England were a very solemn and sorrowful occasion, sometimes attended by large crowds, who would also listen to a [http://calebadams.org/sermon.htm gospel message] and [http://calebadams.org/address.htm remarks by local preachers] and politicians. The Connecticut Courant [http://calebadams.org/news_article.htm records one such public execution] on December 1, 1803, saying, "The assembly conducted through the whole in a very orderly and solemn manner, so much so, as to occasion an observing gentleman aquainted with other countries as well as this, to say that such an assembly, so decent and solemn, could not be collected anywhere but in New England." The state of Michigan was the first state in the union to abolish the death penalty, on March 1, 1847. The 150-year ban on capital punishment has never been repealed, and as such the state is considered to be the first democracy in recorded history to have eliminated capital punishment. Currently, 12 states and the District of Columbia ban capital punishment.

Military

Military organizations have sometimes employed capital punishment. In the past, cowardice, absence without leave, desertion, insubordination, looting, shirking under enemy fire and disobeying orders were often crimes punishable by death. The method of execution since firearms came into common use has almost invariably been firing squad. Today most armies no longer utilize capital punishment, and those armies which still retain the death penalty apply it only to the most serious crimes, such as treason or murder.

Around the present world

murder According to Amnesty International's annual report on official judicial execution, in 2004 there were 3,797 executions in 25 countries. Nine out of every ten executions took place in the People's Republic of China (PRC) which carried out at least 3,400 executions. 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. The higher total in 2004 resulted from a change in Amnesty's method of estimating executions in China. Both methodologies are suspected of yielding low results. (See Capital punishment in the People's Republic of China) Belarus is the only country in Europe that practices death penalty as legal form of punishment. The twelve countries with the most executions in 2004: Conservative American political activist Phyllis Schlafly provides a much higher count of executions in China than Amnesty International: :"...every year China has nearly 10,000 death penalty cases that result in immediate execution. That is five times more than all death penalty cases from other nations combined. China's executions have always been a closely guarded state secret, but these totals were revealed by Chen Zhonglin, a National People's Congress delegate." [http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2004/apr04/04-04-14.html] 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 meted out for what are considered the most serious of offences. Out of 138 persons sentenced in the period from 1999 to 2003, 110 were for drug-related offences, with the rest for murder and arms-related offences. Executions by hanging occur on Friday mornings in Changi prison, and 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. Capital punishment is used widely in Asia for drug related crimes, including in Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam. Most democratic countries today have abolished the death penalty, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, almost all of Europe, and much of Latin America, though in Honduras there is a political debate raging about whether, having been abolished in 1956, it should be restored. Among western countries, the first to abolish capital punishment was Portugal, where the last execution took place in 1846, and the punishment was officially abolished in 1867. In all, 89 countries have abolished the death penalty altogether, another 28 countries have not executed anyone in the last ten years, and 9 officially maintain the death penalty only for "exceptional crimes" (e.g., war crimes). In 1949, Federal Republic of Germany and Costa Rica became the first countries in the world to ban the death penalty in their constitutions. As of 2005, the constitutions of 42 countries prohibit capital punishment. Countries that retain it include Japan, the United States, and a number of countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean. Altogether, 74 countries still use the death penalty. In the United States, the issue of capital punishment is largely left up to the individual states; the federal government reserves the right to perform executions, but does so extremely infrequently. Twelve states have legally abolished the death penalty. Some have reformed the policies, by declaring a moratorium on its use, as has been done in Illinois under Governor George H. Ryan. The most comprehensive source lists less than 15,000 people executed in the United States or its colonial predecessors between 1608 and 1991. [http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm] More accurate statistics list 4,661 executions in the United States in the period 1930–2002 with about two-thirds of them occurring in the first twenty years.[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 took place in 1849. (See also: Capital punishment in the United States) Only six countries practice the death penalty for juveniles, that is criminals aged under 18 at the time of their crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, most executions for juvenile crime took place in the United States, although, due to the slow process of appeals, no one under age 19 has been executed in recent years. [http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm] [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=27&did=206] In 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty cannot be applied to persons who were under age 18 at the time of commission of the crime. That decision resulted in 72 convicted murderers being taken off death row. 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. [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. [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=27&did=208] The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which among other things forbids capital punishment for juveniles, has been signed and ratified by all countries except the USA and Somalia (Somalia at the present time is unable to ratify).[http://www.unicef.org/crc/faq.htm#009] 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 bind only those that are party to them; customary international law does not prohibit 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 and the Council of Europe require abolition of the death penalty by states wishing to join, but are 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. Another example is Latvia which entered a moratorium in 1996. Latvia retains the death penalty in extraordinary circumstances (as does non-EU-member Albania), and is the only member of the European Union not to have ratified the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (which prohibits the death penalty in all circumstances). Latvia's parliament has, however, signed the 13th Protocol. As a EU member Latvia has pledged to abolish the death penalty, and bringing it back to active use could, under articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty of Nice, mean losing voting rights in the European Union. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1599957,00.html] Turkey has recently, as a move towards EU membership, undergone a reform of its legal system. Previously there was a de facto moratorium on death penalty in Turkey as the last execution took place in 1984. The death penalty was removed from peacetime law as in August 2002, and in May 2004 Turkey amended its constitution in order to remove capital punishment in all circumstances. As a result of this, Europe is a continent free of the death penalty in practice (all states having ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights), 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 Council of Europe observer states who practice the death penalty, namely the United States and Japan, to abolish it also or lose their observer status.
- See also:
- Capital punishment in Belarus
- Capital punishment in Canada
- Capital punishment in the People's Republic of China
- Capital punishment in Denmark
- Capital punishment in France
- Capital punishment in Germany
- Capital punishment in India
- Capital punishment in New Zealand
- Capital punishment in Singapore
- Capital punishment in the United Kingdom
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Capital punishment in Japan

Views and opinions concerning the death penalty

Support for the death penalty varies widely, and it can be a highly contentious political issue, particularly in democracies that use it. A decreasing majority of adults in the United States appear to support its continuance (though like most political issues, the numbers vary widely depending on the phrasing of the 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 many parts of Asia where it is maintained including Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia the death penalty appears to have large amounts of public support, and there is little public movement to abolish it. In countries where it has been abolished, debate is sometimes revived by particularly brutal murders, though few countries have brought it back after abolition. However, some opinion polls in Europe and Canada suggest that the death penalty has similar support there to the United States. Others show that the support of the death penalty dropped significantly in the years after the abolition in Western European countries while in most former communist countries there is still a majority for the reintroduction. A recent poll in Italy showed only 23% of respondents in favour of the death penalty.[http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/9305] In many countries that have abolished it, it is a matter of policy that the government will oppose its use in any country. This is generally based on the idea that the capital punishment is inherently wrong and can never be justified, which is frequently the reason given for maintaining an abolishment of capital punishment. However, controversially, on some specific occasions a government may choose to ignore this policy; for example the Australian government has refused to condemn, and in fact has on occasion even seemed to offer tacit support of, the use of capital punishment against those involved in the Bali bombing. There is an ongoing debate as to whether capital punishment reduces crime rates; ideally, potential offenders would be too scared of the punishment to commit the crime. The counterargument is that it doesn't affect the crime rate, because potential criminals think that they won't be caught, so they do not care about punishment until it is 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 lack thereof) is largely irrelevant to many who feel strongly about the debate, as their views are based on other factors.

Arguments against

Some of the major arguments used by those opposed to the death penalty include:
- The death penalty is not a deterrent; those who are against the death penalty claim that recent studies in the US do not support the view that capital punishment acts as a deterrent. [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=167#STUDIES]. It is also argued that anyone who would be deterred by the death penalty would already have been deterred by life in prison, and people that are not deterred by that would not be stopped by any punishment. This argument is typically supported by claims that those states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime. A stronger variant of this argument suggests that criminals who believe they will face the death penalty are more likely to use violence or murder to avoid capture, and that therefore the death penalty might theoretically even increase the rate of violent crime. [http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-07/capital-punishment.html].
- The death penalty is unnecessary. This view, espoused by Pope John Paul II, an outspoken critic of capital punishment, holds that modern prisons are secure enough to reliably protect society from further harm by death row prisoners, whereas in centuries past, life imprisonment may not have been feasible. Therefore, the death penalty serves no purpose to society and violates the sanctity of human life.
- Criminal proceedings are fallible. Some people facing the death penalty have been exonerated, sometimes only minutes before their scheduled execution. Others have been executed before evidence clearing them is discovered. While criminal trials not involving the death penalty can also involve mistakes, there is at least the opportunity for those mistakes to be corrected. This has been particularly relevant in cases where new forensic methods (such as DNA) have become available. Since 1973, 119 people in 25 US states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.
- Death penalty as armed forces' disciplinarian means usually has the opposite effect than desired, eroding the morale of the troops rather than improving it, and striking a wedge between the commissioned and enlisted servicemen as the latter are likely to consider shooting their own as murder. In extreme cases death penalty may lead into fragging incidents.
- Capital punishment usually costs more money than life in prison due to the extra costs of the courts such as mistrials, appeals, and extra supervisions. Additionally, many (if not a majority) of death sentences are overturned on appeal. So the cost is incurred, regardless of the result. [http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/04/24/deathcost24.shtml]
- In the US, over 95% of defendants cannot afford legal representation and end up being represented by court-appointed attorneys whose credentials are distinctly mediocre, because of this it could be argued that the prosecution has an unfair advantage. (This is only in major metropolitan areas. In rural areas the public defenders are regular practicing attorney's on a rotational basis. Source?)
- The death penalty brutalizes society, by sending out the message that killing people is the right thing to do in some circumstances.
- It denies the possibility of rehabilitation. Some hold that a judicial system should have the role of educating and reforming those found guilty of crimes. If one is executed he will never have been educated and made a better person. A Christian variant of this argument would be that no one can place themselves beyond salvation, so society should never give up hope of rehabilitation.
- In the US the race of the person to be executed can also affect the likelihood that they receive a death sentence. Death-penalty proponents counter this by pointing out that most murders where the killer and victim are of the same race tend to be "crimes of passion" while inter-racial murders are usually "felony murders"; that is, murders which were perpetrated during the commission of some other felony (most commonly either armed robbery or forcible rape), the point being that juries are more likely to impose the death penalty in cases where the offender has killed a total stranger than in those where some deep-seated, personal revenge motive may be present. A recent study showed that just 44% of Black Americans support the death penalty. [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/newsanddev.php?scid=23]
- Capital punishment has been used politically to silence dissidents, minority religions (see Falun Gong) and activists. A major exponent of this is the People's Republic of China from which there are many reports of the death penalty being used for politically motivated ends. [http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA170282001?open&of=ENG-392]
- In most Western nations, retribution, or any benefit to the victims, is not stated as a purpose of the criminal justice system.
- Some executions are botched, lethal injection in the US having the highest rate according to Amnesty International. This is often due to the fact that qualified medical professionals are prohibited from taking part. This leads to unqualified staff often taking extreme measures such as cutting into the arms of prisoners when they have been unable to locate a vein in lethal injection procedures. This undoubtedly causes those executed to suffer extended pain. Even those who die instantly suffer prolonged mental anguish leading up to the execution. Other procedures, including the electric chair, cyanide gas chamber and hanging are rarely fast or effective processes and are not designed to minimize pain and suffering.
- The death penalty is a violation of human rights primarily [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#Article_3. Article 3] and [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#Article_5. Article 5] of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some assert that it violates the "natural rights" laid out by 17th-century English philosopher John Locke who set out many of the foundations of American law. The American Declaration of Independence also includes the "right to life" as the first listed of the natural rights. While those against capital punishment might claim this as an irrevocable right, proponents may claim that, as protection from abuse is the basis of such rights, that the right was forfeit by the seriousness of the crimes.
- The death penalty can be turned into a lethal act of revenge by all those involved. Some view the executioners as the "Law's Hitman". It also allows citizens to feel as though they are not morally incriminated by supporting death, because it is death for a "just cause". This psychologically creates a false reality where they are in no ways responsible for a killing. The victim of execution becomes a scapegoat for the overall problem of violent crime.
- An International Gallup poll undertaken in 2000 found that 60% of western Europeans opposed the death penalty. In France, a TNS Sofres poll revealed that twenty years after abolition of capital punishment, 49% of respondents opposed reintroduction of the policy compared with 44% who wanted to reinstate capital punishment. In 2000, a poll in Germany found the percentage of West Germans in favor of capital punishment at just 23% the lowest level in Europe. Just 37% of East Germans favored capital punishment in 2000. (Financial Times, August 22, 2003) A recent US study found that 41% of the public voted in favor of capital punishment, whilst a higher percentage of 44% voted against the death penalty when voters were offered alternative sentences. The most popular alternative to capital punishment being "life without parole" and some form of restitution to the families of victims. [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=209&scid=23#alt] In the United States it is argued that most other developed nations have eliminated the death penalty.
- Capital punishment causes long term emotional injury to the family and friends of the person executed greater than that experienced by other methods of punishment. The mother, father, spouse and children of a person executed are permanently and deeply affected by the execution event and the human loss even though they may have played no part in the alleged crime. Relatives and friends may also be affected by feelings of guilt if they fear they contributed to the event in some way, say by not raising or protecting the child adequately during development. These feelings may never be resolved because the person they need to communicate with is dead.

Arguments for

Some of the major arguments used by those in favour of the death penalty include:
- Deterrence — it may deter other people from committing capital crimes. Many studies (see above) rebut this claim, while others provide support for it.
- Means of maintaining discipline in the armed forces. This can be best summarized by statement of Leon Trotsky: An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements — the animals that we call men — will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear.
- Prevention — it prevents offenders from ever returning to society (life sentences hold out the possibility, however remote, of eventual release), thereby preventing them from committing further crimes. This argument is no longer salient in States with life without parole statutes, unless the prisoner manages to escape custody.
- Retribution — the death penalty is imposed in pursuit of "Eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth" justice. Although execution of a murderer may not provide full justice for the victim, it is the closest form of justice.
- It shows how seriously society looks at the most heinous crimes.
- People who have committed the most heinous crimes (typically murder) have no right to life.
- The death penalty shows the greatest respect for the ordinary man's, and especially the victim's, inviolable value.
- It provides "closure" for victims' families.
- It is less cruel than prolonged imprisonment, especially under the conditions that might be popularly demanded for heinous criminals. Depending on the State, prisoners spend about six to twelve years on death row.
- It provides extra leverage for the prosecutor to deal for important testimony and information.
- It enjoys popular support (in countries where this applies).
- Life imprisonment is very expensive.
- Just as the virtuous deserve reward proportionate to their good deeds, so too the vicious deserve punishment proportionate to their bad deeds. One might even hold, with Kant, that respect is shown to the criminal as someone who has chosen a particular path in life by visiting the appropriate punishment on the criminal.
- Criminals may be led to rethink and reconcile their lives by the pressing expectation of death.
- It upholds the rule of law, because it discourages vigilantism on the part of the victim's family or friends (in the form of lynching or retaliatory murder). If not controlled, such actions can lead to extremely destructive vendettas or blood feuds. In the U.S., capital punishment is concentrated in States where lynching was more common, although no one has been lynched in the South since 1964.
- Without the death penalty, a person already serving a life sentence may have no reason not to kill in prison.
- If the death penalty were abolished, a criminal would have little or no reason not to kill potential witnesses during the commission of a robbery (assuming that robbery would earn the criminal a life sentence or a very lengthy prison sentence).
- By waiving the threat of a death penalty, individuals can be encouraged to plead guilty, accomplices can be encouraged to testify against their co-conspirators, and criminals can be encouraged to lead investigators to the bodies of victims. The threat of the death penalty can be a powerful mechanism for greasing the wheels of justice.

Religious attitudes towards the death penalty

Buddhism and capital punishment

The first of the Five Precepts (Panca-sila) is to abstain from destruction of life. Chapter 10 of the Dhammapada states "Everyone fears punishment; everyone fears death, just as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill. Everyone fears punishment; everyone loves life, as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill." Chapter 26, the final chapter of the Dhammapada states "Him I call a brahmin who has put aside weapons and renounced violence toward all creatures. He neither kills nor helps others to kill." This is interpreted by many Buddhists (especially in the West) as an injunction against supporting any legal measure which might lead to the death penalty. However, as is often the case with the interpretation of scripture, there is dispute on this matter. Thailand and Bhutan, where Buddhism is the official religion, practice the death penalty. Other countries where the majority of the population are Buddhist (such as Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea and Taiwan) are also retentionist. Moreover, throughout history, countries where Buddhism was the official religion (most of the Far East and Indochina) practiced the death penalty. The first precept of Buddhism focuses mainly on direct participation in the destruction of life. This is one reason that the Buddha made a distinction between killing animals and eating meat, and refused to introduce vegetarianism into monastic practice (see the Vegetarian section of the Wikipedia article on Buddhism). In Jataka, which tell stories of the past lives of the Buddha, Boddisatva (a previous incarnation of the Buddha) actually kills someone to save another person's life, though because of this action, he was no longer able to achieve enlightment in that particular life. Therefore, few (if any) buddhist groups issue blanket decrees against Buddhists being soldiers, police officers or livestock farmers, and some argue that the death penalty is permissible in certain circumstances. Almost all Buddhist groups oppose the use of the death penalty as a means of retribution.

Christianity and capital punishment

Christians believe that 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 the price 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. As a matter of practice among Christians, there are two broad patterns. Firstly, there is a tendency for Christian opinions to match those of the countries they live in; many Christians based outside the USA are against capital punishment, while some Christians of largely American denominations are in favour of it. Often overlooked is the fact that virtually all of the mainline Christian churches in the United states have maintained official positions against the death penalty since the 1950s and early 1960s. [See http://www.pfadp.org People of Faith Against the Death Penalty] Secondly, various Christian groups, including the more liberal members of the Roman Catholic Church, tend to oppose it while most conservative Protestant groups support it—exceptions to this rule include the Amish and Mennonites; they oppose the death penalty. Pope John Paul II described capital punishment as part of a "culture of death". Many Roman Catholics, especially in America, tended to agree with his view, which is a clear testament to his influence over the Roman Catholic Church of his time. However, the Church as a whole is not completely opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances as a matter of doctrine; rather, John Paul II, as an individual, was opposed to it. Catholics are called to oppose the death penalty if the condemned can be successfully kept behind bars to protect society. If, however, the condemned poses a threat to the well-being of society and is not likely to be able to be kept behind bars then capital punishment is permissable. However, this last exception in the modern day world seems extremely rare. 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 tend to select their passages from the New Testament that advocate love, forgiveness, and mercy. In Matthew 5:38-39, 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 neighbour 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 by stoning; Jesus saves her life by requiring that the first stone be cast by someone who has never sinned, and rather than take that role himself, simply tells the woman not to transgress again. (It should be noted that the passage in question is absent from some early manuscripts, which may indicate that it is a later addition to the text.) Another verse quoted often by supporters of capital punishment is Romans 13:4, "...But if you do evil, be afraid; for [the governing authority] does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil." - supporters point to the fact that a sword is a instrument used for killing, not scourging. Interpreting the Bible as a story of man's redemption through repentance 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 all who die without repentance automatically go there, and point out that many serial killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, became born again Christians in prison. The less forgiving might observe that the families of their victims are unlikely to be comforted by the prospect of these men entering heaven. It should be pointed out that Christianity is based on the teachings of Christ, few would contest this. Therefore advocating the Old Testament over the New Testament has been argued by groups such as Quakers and some non-Christian critics to show inconsistency in the views of pro capital punishment Christians.

Judaism and capital punishment

The Jewish view of all laws in the Bible is based on the reading of the Bible as seen through Judaism's corpus of oral law. These oral laws were first recorded around 200 CE in the Mishnah and later around 600 CE in the Babylonian Talmud. The laws make it clear that the death penalty was only used in very rare cases. The Mishnah states that "A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: a Sanhedrin that puts a man to death even once in 70 years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: Had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death" (Mishnah, Makkot 1:10).
- if there were two witnesses to the crime
- if the witnesses verbally warned the person that they were liable for the death penalty
- if that person then acknowledged that he/she was warned, yet then went ahead and committed the sin regardless.
- Further, an individual was not allowed to testify against him/herself. As such, the death penalty was effectively legislated out of existence. Today, the State of Israel only uses the death penalty for extraordinary crimes. The last – and only – execution in Israel took place in 1962 against convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. In Orthodox Judaism, it is held that in theory the death penalty is a correct and just punishment for some crimes. However in practice the application of such a punishment can only be carried out by humans whose system of justice is nearly perfect, a situation which has not existed for some time. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan writes: "In practice, however, these punishments were almost never invoked, and existed mainly as a deterrent and to indicate the seriousness of the sins for which they were prescribed. The rules of evidence and other safeguards that the Torah provides to protect the accused made it all but impossible to actually invoke these penalties…the system of judicial punishments could become brutal and barbaric unless administered in an atmosphere of the highest morality and piety. When these standards declined among the Jewish people, the Sanhedrin...voluntarily abolished this system of penalties." (Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, Volume II, pp. 170-71) Rabbi Yosef Edelstein, Director of the Savannah Kollel, writes: :So, at least theoretically, the Torah can be said to be pro-capital punishment. It is not morally wrong, in absolute terms, to put a murderer to death.... :However, things look rather different when we turn our attention to the practical realization of this seemingly harsh legislation. You may be aware that it was exceedingly difficult, in practice, to carry out the death penalty in Jewish society... :....I think it's clear that with regard to Jewish jurisprudence, the capital punishment outlined by the Written and Oral Torah, and as carried out by the greatest Sages from among our people (who were paragons of humility and humanity and not just scholarship, needless to say), did not remotely resemble the death penalty in modern America (or Texas). :In theory, capital punishment is kosher; it's morally right, in the Torah's eyes. But we have seen that there was great concern—expressed both in the legislation of the Torah, and in the sentiments of some of our great Sages—regarding its practical implementation. It was carried out in ancient Israel, but only with great difficulty. Once in seven years; not 135 in five and a half. 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: :The Talmud ruled out the admissibility of circumstantial evidence in cases which involved a capital crime. Two witnesses were required to testify that they saw the action with their own eyes. A man could not be found guilty of a capital crime through his own confession or through the testimony of immediate members of his family. The rabbis demanded a condition of cool premeditation in the act of crime before their would sanction the death penalty; the specific test on which they insisted was that the criminal be warned prior to the crime, and that the criminal indicate by responding to the warning, that he is fully aware of his deed, but that he is determined to go through with it. In effect this did away with the application of the death penalty. The rabbis were aware of this, and they declared openly that they found capital punishment repugnant to them…There is another reason which argues for the abolition of capital punishment. It is the fact of human fallibility. Too often we learn of people who were convicted of crimes and only later are new facts uncovered by which their innocence is established. The doors of the jail can be opened, in such cases we can partially undo the injustice. But the dead cannot be brought back to life again. We regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete…" :Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards 1927-1970 Volume III, p.1537-1538

Islam and capital punishment

Islamic scholars state that whilst the Qur'an professes the basic principle that everyone has the right to life, this principle allows for an exception when a court of law demands it. Their precept is "Do not kill a Soul which Allah has made sacred except through the due process of law." This exception authorizes the administration of capital punishment when Islamic law dictates. This is the line taken by most if not all countries where Islam is the state religion or the principal religion (e.g. throughout the Arab world, Indonesia, Malaysia etc.). Islamic scholars also point out that Sharia (Qur'anic law) contains many safeguards to prevent miscarriage of justice. Sharia also has a clear injunction that strict equivalence must be observed; therefore if a woman kills a man, or a man kills a woman, or a slave kills a free person, or a free person kills a slave, capital punishment cannot be applied. One notable characteristic of Sharia is that the family of a murder victim can pardon the murderer. In Islam, the victim and/or the victim's family are the judges for all crimes; they decide what the punishment shall be under the supervision of a person who knows the Qur'an.

In arts and entertainment

Literature

In the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, The Black Cat, the narrator is writing the day before he is put to death. In The Stranger (L'Etranger) by Albert Camus, the main character is sentenced to death for shooting and killing an Arab on the beach. In The Chamber by John Grisham, a young lawyer tries to save a klansman on death row who is awaiting his execution in the gas chamber. In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, the main character is sentenced to be hanged, but escapes back to his home. Near the end of his journey, it is shown that his entire escape sequence was a vision in the seconds before the rope breaks his neck. There have been at least three film adaptations.

Art

The electric chair was used to promote the electric industry in

Sentence (law)

In law, a sentence forms the final act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence generally involves a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. Those imprisoned for multiple crimes, will serve either a consecutive sentence (in which the period of imprisonment equals the sum of all the sentences) or a concurrent sentence (in which the period of imprisonment equals the length of the longest sentence). If a sentence gets reduced to a less harsh (or "softer") punishment, then the sentences is said to have been "mitigated". Sometimes murder charges are "mitigated" and reduced to manslaughter charges. The first use of this word with this meaning was in Roman law, where it indicated the opinion of a jurist on a given question, expressed in written or in oral responsa. It was also the opinion of senators (that was translated into the senatus consultus). It finally was also the decision of the judging organ (both in civil and in penal trials), as well as the decision of the Arbiter (in arbitration). In modern Latin systems the sentence is mainly the final act of any procedure in which a judge, or more generally an organ is called to express his evaluation, therefore it can be issued practically in any field of law requiring a function of evaluation of something by an organ. Sentences are variously classified depending on:
- the legal field, or kind of action, or system it refers to:
- civil, penal, administrative, canon, ..., sentence.
- sentences of mere clearance, of condemnation, of constitution.
- the issuing organ (typically a monocratic judge or a court, or other figures that receive a legitimation by the system).
- the jurisdiction and the legal competence: single judges, courts, tribunals, appeals, supreme courts, constitutional courts, etc., meant as the various degrees of judgment and appeal.
- the content:
- partial, cautelar, interlocutory, preliminar (sententia instructoria), definitive sentences.
- sentence of absolutio (discharge) or condemnatio (briefly damnatio, also for other meanings - condemnation). The sentences of condemnation are also classified by the penalty they determine:
- sentence of reclusion,
- sentence of fee,
- sententia agendi, sentence that impose a determined action (or a series of action) as a penalty for the illegal act. This kind of sentence became better developed and remained in wider use in common law systems. Usually the sentence comes after a process in which the deciding organ is put in condition to correctly evaluate whether the analysed conduct complies or not with the legal systems, and eventually which aspects of the conduct might regard which laws. Depending on respective systems, the phasis that precede [precedes?] the sentence may vary relevantly and the sentence can be resisted (by both parties) in front of up to a given degree of appeal. The sentence issued by the Appeal court of highest admitted degree immediately becomes the definitive sentence, as well as the sentence issued in minor degrees that is not resisted by the condemned or by the accusator (or is not resisted within a given time). The sentence usually has to be rendered of public domain (publicatio) and in most systems it has to be accompanied by the reasons for its content (a sort of story of the juridical reflections and evaluations that the judging organ used to produce it). A sentence (even a definitive one) can be annulled in some given cases, that many systems usually pre-determine. The most frequent case is related to irregularities found ex-post in the procedure, the most éclatant is perhaps in penal cases, when a relevant (often discharging) proof is discovered after the definitive sentence. In most systems the definitive sentence is unique, in the precise sense that no one can be judged more than once for the same action (apart, obviously, from appeal resistance). Sentences are in many systems a source of law, as an authoritative interpretation of the law in front of concrete cases, thus quite as an extension of the ordinary formal documental system. The sentence is generally issued by the judge in the name of (or on the behalf of) the superior authority of the State.

Execution by firing squad

Execution by firing squad is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in times of war. A firing squad is a group of people, usually soldiers, who are ordered to shoot at the condemned person simultaneously. No single member of the firing squad can save the condemned person's life by not firing, reducing the moral incentive to disobey the order to shoot, a phenomenon known as diffusion of responsibility. Executions are usually carried out with high-caliber rifles to facilitate a quick death. The condemned may be seated or standing but is usually restrained. The condemned is often hooded or blindfolded. In some cases, one member of the firing squad is issued a gun containing a blank cartridge instead of one with a bullet, without telling any of them whom it was given to. There are two theories supporting this practice. First, each can hope beforehand that he will not be one who contributes to the killing. This is believed to reduce flinching and to make the execution proceed more reliably. Second, it allows each of the soldiers a chance to believe afterward that he did not personally fire a fatal shot. While an experienced marksman can tell the difference between a blank and a live cartridge based on the recoil (the blank will have much lower recoil), there is a significant psychological incentive not to pay attention and, over time, to remember the recoil as soft. The firing squad is commonly used to execute spies. It is often considered a particularly honorable method of execution, and as such is intentionally not used for war criminals, who are often hanged—a penalty associated with common criminals. Firing squads were, however, used by some countries to execute war criminals after World War II, most notably by Poland, Russia and Norway. The method is also the supreme punishment or disciplinary means employed by courts martial for crimes such as cowardice, desertion or mutiny such as in the execution of Private Eddie Slovik by the U.S. Army in 1945 (Slovik was the first US soldier executed for desertion since the American Civil War). It has also been applied for ordinary crimes carried out by soldiers, such as murder or rape. It may also be applied to other crimes committed by military personnel; as an example, French military engineer Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry was executed by firing squad for his participation in an assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle. Firing squads may also be used for political crimes. Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu was executed by this method on 25 December, 1989. Execution by firing squad is distinct from other forms of execution by firearms, such as a single shot from a handgun to the back of the neck.

Firing squads in the US

According to Executions in the U.S. 1608-1987 by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smylka, it is estimated that 142 men have been judicially shot in the United States and English-speaking predecessor territories since 1608, excluding executions related to the American Civil War. The Civil War saw several hundred firing squad deaths, but reliable numbers are not yet available. Crimes punishable by firing squad in the Civil War included desertion, intentionally killing a superior officer or fellow soldier, and being a spy. Capital punishment was suspended in the United States between 1967 and 1976 as a result of several decisions of the United States Supreme Court. It was relaunched by the execution of Gary Gilmore on January 24, 1977 at Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah by a five-man firing squad. The executioners were equipped with .308 rifles loaded with off-the-shelf Winchester SilverTip ammunition, and fired at a seated and hooded Gilmore from 20 feet (6 m), aiming at the chest. Supposedly, one of the rifles was loaded with a blank, in accordance with tradition. Gary Gilmore's brother, Mikal Gilmore, however, wrote in his memoir that when he subsequently examined the shirt that Gary was wearing during the execution, there were five bullet holes in it. Mikal Gilmore The only other execution by firing squad (that of John Albert Taylor in 1996) also took place in Utah In Utah, the firing squad was made up from volunteers of peace officers from the county in which the condemned was convicted. Execution by firing squad was banned in Utah by a law passed on March 15, 2004. Idaho and Oklahoma are the only states in which execution by firing squad is still legally available, although four Utah convicts that previously chose to die by firing squad will have their requests honored (should they ultimately be executed).

External links

- [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/december/firing-squad.htm Firing Squad Execution of a Civil War Deserter Described in an 1861 Newspaper] Category:Death penalty

Hanging

Hanging is a form of execution or a method for suicide. Hanging may involve breaking of the neck (cervical fracture, in the case of a "long-drop"), or one or more of the following (in the case of a "short-drop"):
- Closing the airway
- Closing the carotid arteries
- Closing the jugular veins
- Carotid reflex (which reduces heartbeat when the pressure in the carotid arteries is high) causing cardiac arrest As punishment it has been used throughout history. In England the short drop method was used until the 19th century, when the long-drop was introduced. The short-drop could be a protracted affair and was primarily for the entertainment of the watching public, the struggling of the victim giving rise to such terms as "the hangman's hornpipe".

History

Hanging has been used as punishment throughout history; it is known to have been invented and used by the Persian Empire. The typical sentence involving hanging is that the condemned person "be hanged by the neck until dead". A more elaborate sentence, once used for particularly heinous crimes (e.g., high treason in Britain), was for the person to be "hanged, drawn and quartered" – here the victim was saved from asphyxiation in order to endure the further ordeals. Hanging has historically been the method of execution used for common criminals; in feudal England, for example, peasants were usually hanged for crimes, while the nobility were usually beheaded. Since as a result hanging has become associated with dishonorable execution, the courts in the post-World War II war crimes trials in Germany (the Nuremberg trials) and Japan mandated its use for war criminals rather than execution by firing squad. As a form of judicial execution in England, hanging is thought to date from the Saxon period, circa AD 400. Records of the names of British hangmen begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s; complete records extend from the 1500s to the last hangmen, Robert Leslie Stewart and Harry Allen, who conducted the last British executions in 1964. Early methods of hanging simply involved a hangman's noose on a rope placed around the victim's neck, with the loose end thrown over or tied to a tree branch; the hangman then drew up the criminal, who slowly strangled. An early refinement had the victim climb a ladder or stand in a cart that the hangman then removed. As the number of executions increased, purpose-built gallows, which usually consisted of two posts joined by a crossbeam, replaced trees. Soon virtually every major town and city in Britain had its own gallows. Although hangmen had introduced the "drop" by the late 1700s, it was initially only a substitute for the ladder or the cart. The first well-known practitioner of "the drop" was William Calcraft, but his successor William Marwood (who was often quoted as saying "Calcraft hanged them, I execute them"), introduced the "long drop". Marwood realised that each person required a different drop, based on the prisoner's weight, which would dislocate the cervical vertebrae resulting in "instantaneous" death. vertebrae A process of sometimes grisly experimentation led to the discovery that an energy of 1260 foot pounds (1710 joules) would have the desired effect, so one could calculate the required drop by dividing 1260 by the weight of the victim: a person weighing 112 pounds (50.8 kg) required a drop of 11'4" (3.43 m). Over time, Marwood refined this basic formula to take account of the prisoner's age, stature, and physical condition, especially after some early mistakes when too great a drop resulted in decapitation. Marwood also experimented with the positioning of the knot, and discovered that placing it under the left ear or under the angle of the left jaw would jerk the head backwards at the end of the drop and instantly sever the spinal cord and dislocate the cervical vertebrae. Prison governors and staff who were required, following the abolition of public executions in 1868, to witness executions at close quarters, welcomed the development of swift and "clean" methods of hanging. As time went by, hanging became more of a science than an art. By the mid-20th century the average time between taking a victim from the cell and death was around fifteen seconds – although on May 8, 1951 Albert Pierrepoint conducted the fastest hanging on record when James Inglis, whom a court had only three weeks earlier convicted and sentenced for the murder of a prostitute, fell through the trap only seven seconds after leaving his cell. Extra-legal primitive forms of hanging persisted well into the 20th Century in the United States in the form of lynchings, where torture and/or mutilation of the corpse often accompanied the hanging. Death is cause by severing the spinal cord between C1 and C2, which stops breathing by effectively stopping the diaphragm from working. Forensic experts can tell if hanging is suicide or homicide, as each leaves a distinctive ligature mark. If the hyoid bone is broken, it usually means the person has been murdered. Also, there have been cases of autoerotic asphyxiation leading to death; recently, kids have died from playing the choking game.

Britain

Until 1808 the law in Britain offered the death penalty for some 200 offenses, including:
- Attempting suicide
- Being in the company of gypsies for one month
- Vagrancy for soldiers and sailors
- "Strong evidence of malice" in children aged 7–14 years old A variety of loopholes in British criminal law, together with judicial leniency, tempered the law's tendency to prescribe hanging for what many would today consider minor offences. First-time offenders could escape a capital sentence for some crimes through the benefit of clergy, and of those criminals actually sentenced to death, many were later pardoned. Only about half the death sentences pronounced at common law in the 18th century were carried out, and by the beginning of the 19th century, growing doubt over the appropriateness of capital punishment led to nearly 90% of British capital sentences being commuted to lesser punishments. Between 1832 and 1834 Parliament abolished the death penalty for:
- Shoplifting goods worth five shillings (£0.25) or less
- Returning from Transportation
- Letter-stealing
- Sacrilege In 1861 The Parliament reduced the number of capital crimes to four:
- Murder
- Treason
- Arson in Royal Dockyards
- Piracy with violence Britain ended public hangings in 1868 and formally abolished the hanging, beheading and quartering of traitors in 1870. In 1965 Parliament passed the 'Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act' abolishing capital punishment for murder. And with the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998, the death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both civilian and military cases.

Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, the last persons to be sentenced to death by hanging were Andrey Vlasov and 11 other officers of his army on August 1, 1946.

Iran

1946 One of the hanging execution procedures currently used in Iran does not use a drop, but involves using an automotive telescoping crane to hoist the condemned aloft. This method may have been adapted from yardarm hangings carried out by the Royal Navy. A recent hanging carried out by this method in Iran was that of a 16 year old girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, who was hanged in August 2004 for sexual misdemeanours. The conduct of her case and her actual execution were very controversial internationally.

The United States

In the United States, other forms of capital punishment, such as the electric chair and more recently lethal injection, have largely replaced hanging. At present, only Washington and New Hampshire still retain hanging as an option. Laws changed in 1996 that penalties of death must be executed by injection unless the convict chooses hanging, but none has taken place ever since. In New Hampshire if it found "... to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death ..." by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged.[http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/lxii/630/630-5.htm] In Washington, the default method is lethal injection, though the condemned can choose hanging.[http://www.leg.wa.gov/RCW/index.cfm?section=10.95.180&fuseaction=section] Serial killer and child molester Westley Allan Dodd chose it over injection in 1992. (See the book Driven to Kill.) Charles Campbell was another person hanged in the same State on 27 May 1994. The last person hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, on January 25 1996 in Delaware, and later the same state abolished this practice.

Singapore

Singapore has an extensive history of hanging, currently employing mandatory execution as punishment for various crimes. The government controlled media of Singapore relinquish attention from anti-death penalty movements which are graphically stirring in the country since the execution of a 25-year old Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, who was hanged on December 2, 2005 despite pleas from Australian politicians, religious leaders, cultural leaders, diplomats, Amnesty International and numerous other international pressure to allow a stay. Hanging remains the primary form of capital punishment in Singapore. Local laws mandate the death penalty for drug trafficking above certain quantities. Whether recent debate and international pressure resulting from the hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van will lead to changes remains to be seen. Singapore is one of the few countries in which citizens who hold contrary views to the death penalty are liable to criminal charges as well as state sponsored harassment. Evidence of this can be seen in the recent backlash against artistic displays vilifying 'state sponsored murder' as the artists put it, with officials destroying the artworks within hours of the displays opening.

Recent hangings

Nguyen Tuong Van, 2005). [http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/07/iran_executes_2.html][http://www.gayrussia.ru/en/detail.php?ID=1596].]] Hanging is commonly the method of executing penalties of death in Commonwealth countries that still have it, e.g., Malaysia and Singapore. A recent case of capital punishment by hanging is that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of the 1990 murder and rape of a 14 year old girl in Kolkata(Calcutta) in India. Although the Supreme Court of India has suggested that capital punishment be given in the rarest of rare cases, Chatterjee was executed on August 14 2004 in the first execution in West Bengal for eleven years. On February 27 2004 the mastermind of the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Shoko Asahara, was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Hanging is the common method of execution in capital punishment cases in Japan, although the punishment is rarely executed. On July 19 2005, two Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were publicly hanged at Edalat (Justice) Square in Mashhad, northeast Iran, on charges of homosexuality and rape. The punishment has been met with international outrage. At the ages of 15 and 17, respectively, they were discovered having sexual relations. They were imprisoned for fourteen months and subjected to 228 lashes each, then executed. According to the ISNA report as translated by OutRage "They admitted having gay sex but claimed in their defense that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death." Subsequent to their execution the government broadcast the allegation that they had raped a 13-year-old boy, a story rejected by MAHA, the voice of the Iranian gay community.[http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/07/iran_executes_2.html][http://www.gayrussia.ru/en/detail.php?ID=1596] In Singapore, a 25-year old Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, was hanged on December 2, 2005 on charges of drug trafficking in 2002. Numerous efforts from both the Australian government, numerous QCs (Queens Counsels) and countless petitions from organisations such as Amnesty International had failed. Opinion in Australia is divided, with people both opposed to and in support of the death penalty. Many Australian people have said that they will boycott Singapore in a backlash from this hanging. Others, in both Singapore and Australia, have accepted the hanging as law.

Grammar

The term "hanging" is the focus of a famous bit of grammatical trivia. Traditionally, the past tense and past participle of the verb "to hang" are "hung" when referring to the abstract idea of hanging things, but "hanged" when referring to an execution or death by hanging.[http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/hang][http://trackerpress.com/pdf/Page_60.pdf] For example, consider the following sentence: ::The butcher hanged himself in the freezer where he had hung meat. In the musical My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins (ironically, a linguistic genius) sings in the song "Why Can't the English?": ::By rights she should be taken out and hung ::For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue For the sake of rhyming, he commits the error, when grammatically he should have correctly said "taken out and hanged". linguistic

Folklore

A common legend holds that if the rope used to hang a person breaks three times, it is a sign of divine intervention and the condemned should be released.

External links

- [http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution/Protocol%20Hanging.htm 1990 Manual for Hanging in the State of Delaware]. Provides mathematical formulas for determining the proper "drop" height of a condemned criminal.
- [http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton/Lincoln3.html The Hanging of the convicted Lincoln assassination conspirators] Category:Death penalty Category:Human body positions ja:絞首刑

Atrocities

:"Massacre" redirects here. For other uses, see Atrocity (disambiguation) An atrocity (from the Latin atrox, "atrocious", from Latin ater = "matte black" (as distinct from niger = "shiny black")) is a term used to describe crimes ranging from an act committed against a single person to one committed against a population or ethnic group. In general use, an atrocity or massacre designates a politically or ethnically motivated killing of civilians. In international law, more precise terms are war crime and crime against humanity. An atrocity can be a single specific event, or a series of events, or can refer to genocide. The defining characteristic of an atrocity is its brutal or systematic nature. It is an act of killing that is in violation of most traditional moral principles, although some societies do not condemn such behavior. Often, hostilities exceed the legitimate mandate of killing enemy combatants to include attacks upon unarmed people, upon combatants after their surrender, or upon otherwise non-combative peoples. Thus, nearly every culture has in its history acts of killing which are atrocities. The historical record is clouded by a failure to determine if mutilated bodies represent torture before death, or mutilation of a dead body. In either case, the important effect is the propaganda value, and its effect on the morale of the enemy. The word "massacre" is sometimes misused in commercial advertisements, e.g. such phrases as "price massacre". Even massacre, mass killing, is imposed on civilian populations of no military significance, simply as a warning. For example Lidice. In other cases, they are targeted at military sub-groups, such as African-American summary execution in the field by the Conferderate Army during the Civil War. Small-scale atrocities may represent anything from disrespect, regional propaganda or both. In modern settings not involving ethnic conflict, atrocities on individual leaders are rare, partially because they tend backfire or simply escalate, as in the case of Breaker Morant. In ethnic conflict, atrocity is often just an expression of pure revenge, with no notion of justice involved. Lincoln considered responding with executions in-kind for every Black Union solider murdered on the field, but he recognized that the problem was a difference in point of view between the two sides that would lead to a spiraling of escalation in the inevitable tit-for-tat that would follow. Again, the problem was that the North considered the black man fully human and the South did not. From a strict Constitutional constructionist point of view, the South was correct in that the black man only counted for three-fifths a full human being, and that dehumanizing factor is what allowed for what others considered to be atrocity. Recall that the whole three-fifths notion was simply the result of compromise hammered out a hundred years earlier to bring the South into the Union in the first place.

Torture

was an infamous torture device.]] Torture is is the infliction of severe physical or psychological torment as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent, revenge or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confessions. Torture is almost universally considered to be an extreme violation of human rights, as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention agree not to torture protected persons (enemy civilians and POWs) in armed conflicts, and signatories of the UN Convention Against Torture agree not to intentionally inflict severe pain or suffering on anyone, to obtain information or a confession, to punish them, or to coerce them or a third person. These conventions and agreements notwithstanding, it is estimated by organizations such as Amnesty International that around 2/3 of countries do not consistently abide by the spirit of such treaties.

Current legal status of torture

On December 10, 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Article 5 states "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Since that time the use of torture has been regulated by a number of international treaties, of which the two major ones are the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.

United Nations Convention Against Torture

The "United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment"(UNCAT) came into force in June 1987. The most relevant articles are articles 1, 2, 3 and the first paragraph of article 16. :Article 1 :1. Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. :2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application. 1 :Article 2 :1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. :2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. :3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. :Article 3 :1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. :2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. :Article 16 :1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. There are several points which should be noted:
- Section 1: torture is defined as severe pain or suffering, which means there exist levels of pain and suffering which are not severe enough to be called torture. Discussions on this area of international law are influenced by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights(ECHR). See the section Other conventions for more details on the ECHR ruling.
- Section 2: If a state has signed the treaty without reservations, then there are no exceptional circumstances whatsoever where a state can use torture and not break its treaty obligations. However the worst sanction which can be applied to a powerful country is a public record that they have broken their treaty obligations. In certain exceptional cases the authorities in those countries may consider that, with plausible deniability, this is an acceptable risk to take as the definition of severe is open to interpretation.
- Section 16: contains the phrase territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, so if the government of a state authorises its personnel to use sensory deprivation on a detainee in territory not under its jurisdiction then it has not broken its treaty obligations. At the moment this treaty has been signed by about half the countries in the world.

Geneva Conventions

The four Geneva Conventions provide protection for people who fall into enemy hands. They envisage war in its traditional form, whereby people in uniforms fight clearly defined enemies in uniform, within a clearly defined arena. It therefore divides people into two explicit groups: combatants and non-combatants (civilians). There is a third group whose existence is implied, but whose treatment is not covered in detail. These are unlawful combatants, such as spies, mercenaries and other combatants who have broken the laws of war, for example by firing on an enemy while flying a white flag. Whilst combatants and non-combatants are provided substantial protection, a lesser level of protection is afforded to unlawful combatants. The third(GCIII) and fourth(GCIV) Geneva Conventions are the two most relevant for the treatment of the victims of conflicts. Both treaties state in their similarly worded article 3 that in a non-international armed conflict that "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms... shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and that there must not be any "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture." or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment". Under GCIV most enemy civilians in an international armed conflict will be "Protected Persons" under the meaning of GCIV, (see exemptions section immediately after this for those who are not). Under article 32, protected persons have the right to protection from "murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments...but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by non-combatant or military agents." The treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) in an international armed conflict is covered by GCIII. In particular article 17 states that "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.". GCIII POW status has far fewer exemptions than "Protected Person" status under GCIV. If a person is an enemy combatant in an international armed conflict, then they will have the protection of GCIII and be entitled to be regarded as POWs under GCIII unless they are an unlawful combatant. If there is a question of whether the combatant is an unlawful combatant, they must be treated as POW's "until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal" (GCIII article 5). If the tribunal decides that they are an unlawful combatant, and they are a Protected Person under GCIV, they will still have the some protections under GCIV Article 5. They must be "treated with humanity and, in case of trial [for war crimes], shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention". A person, who is found guilty of war crimes in an international armed conflict, or is not protected by GCIV because of some other exemption, is no longer protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Geneva Convention IV exemptions

GCIV provides an important exemption: :"Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention [ie GCIV] as would ... be prejudicial to the security of such State." (GCIV article 5) In a conflict like the U.S. War on Terrorism many so-called "unlawful combatants" have been controversially denied protection under the Geneva Conventions, because they are either excluded by their nationality (see below) or they are deemed to be so dangerous that Article 5 can be invoked. There are two further groups who are not protected by GCIV: # Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. # Nationals of a neutral State in the territory of a combatant State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, cannot claim the protection of GCIV if their home state has normal diplomatic representation in the State that holds them (article 4). Since nearly every state has diplomatic recognition of every other state, most citizens of

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