capital punishment in the uk essay

A brief history of capital punishment in Britain

Between the late 17th and early 19th century, Britain’s ‘Bloody Code’ made more than 200 crimes – many of them trivial – punishable by death. Writing for History Extra , criminologist and historian Lizzie Seal considers the various ways in which capital punishment has been enforced throughout British history and investigates the timeline to its abolition in 1965

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British forms of punishment

From as early as the Anglo-Saxon era, right up to 1965 when the death penalty was abolished, the main form of capital punishment in Britain was hanging. Initially, this involved placing a noose around the neck of the condemned and suspending them from the branch of a tree. Ladders and carts were used to hang people from wooden gallows, which entailed death by asphyxiation.

In the late 13th century the act of hanging morphed into the highly ritualised practice of ‘drawing, hanging and quartering’ – the severest punishment reserved for those who had committed treason. In this process, ‘drawing’ referred to the dragging of the condemned to the place of execution. After they were hanged, their body was punished further by disembowelling, beheading, burning and ‘quartering’ – cutting off the limbs. The perpetrator’s head and limbs were often publicly displayed following the execution.

Later, the ‘New Drop’ gallows – first used at London’s Newgate Prison in 1783 – could accommodate two or three prisoners at a time and were constructed on platforms with trapdoors through which the condemned fell. The innovation of the ‘long drop’ [a method of hanging which considered the weight of the condemned, the length of the drop and the placement of the knot] in the later 19th century caused death by breaking the condemned’s neck, which was deemed quicker and less painful than strangling.

Burning at the stake was another form of capital punishment, used in England from the 11th century for heresy and the 13th century for treason. It was also used specifically for women convicted of petty treason (the charge given for the murder of her husband or employer). Though hanging replaced burning as the method of capital punishment for treason in 1790, the burning of those suspected of witchcraft was practiced in Scotland until the 18th century.

For other – perhaps luckier – souls and for those of noble birth who were condemned to die, execution by beheading (which was considered the least brutal method of execution) was used until the 18th century. Death by firing squad was also used as form of execution by the military.

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The ‘Bloody Code’

Britain’s ‘Bloody Code’ was the name given to the legal system between the late-17th and early-19th century which made more than 200 offences – many of them petty – punishable by death. Statutes introduced between 1688 and 1815 covered primarily property offences, such as pickpocketing, cutting down trees and shoplifting.

Nevertheless, despite the ‘mushrooming’ of capital crimes, fewer people were actually executed in the 18th century than during the preceding two centuries. This paradox can be explained by the specificity of the capital statutes, which meant it was often possible to convict people of lesser crimes. For example, theft of goods above a certain value carried the death penalty, so the jury could circumvent this by underestimating the value of said goods.

Certain regions with more autonomy, including Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, were particularly reluctant to implement the Bloody Code and, by the 1830s, executions for crimes other than murder had become extremely rare.

Vocal critics of the Bloody Code included early 19th-century MP Sir Samuel Romilly, who worked for its reform. A barrister by profession, he was appointed solicitor general [a senior law officer of the crown] and entered the House of Commons in 1806. He succeeded in repealing the death penalty for some minor crimes and in ending the use of disembowelling convicted criminals while alive. Later, liberal MP William Ewart brought bills which abolished hanging in chains (in 1834) and ended capital punishment for cattle stealing and other minor offences (in 1837).

In the 1840s, prominent figures including writers Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray highlighted what they believed to be the brutalising effects of public hanging. Far from encouraging solemnity, hangings were entertaining spectacles that whipped up the crowd’s passions, they argued – and the presence of the crowd was a potential source of unruliness. Dickens attended the executions of Maria and Frederick Manning at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, south London, in 1849. The pair had been convicted of the murder of a customs official named Patrick O’Connor, whom they had killed and buried under the kitchen floorboards at their London home. Their case was nicknamed by the press: “the Bermondsey Horror”. Dickens later wrote to The Times expressing his distaste for the “levity of the immense crowd” and the “thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind” who flocked there to watch the execution.

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There was also an ongoing, more general campaign for the abolition of the death penalty on moral and humanitarian grounds. Many campaigners argued that the infliction of pain was interpreted as corrupting and uncivilised, and that the death penalty did not allow for the redemption of the criminal.

In 1861, the death penalty was abolished for all crimes except murder; high treason; piracy with violence; and arson in the royal dockyards. The ending of public execution in 1868 (by the Capital Punishment Act) further dampened abolitionism. But although anti-death penalty sentiment was not widespread, certain cases aroused public sympathy, especially those of women. Such cases included Florence Maybrick, who was reprieved from the gallows in 1889 amid doubts about the strength of evidence against her for poisoning her husband. Meanwhile, in 1899 a press campaign was launched on behalf of Mary Ann Ansell, who was accused of murdering her sister, which highlighted concerns about her mental soundness. Ansell was nevertheless hanged that year.

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Capital punishment in the 20th century

From the first half of the 20th century, legislation further limited the application of capital punishment. The Infanticide Act of 1922 made the murder of a newborn baby by its mother a separate offence from murder and one which was not a capital crime. The death sentence for pregnant women was abolished in 1931. Both these changes brought the law into line with long-existing practice of not executing pregnant women or women convicted of infanticide, as did abolishing the death penalty for under-18s in 1933: no-one below this age had been executed in Britain since 1887.

Campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty once again gathered speed in the 1920s, in part galvanised by the execution of Edith Thompson in 1923. Thompson and her lover, Freddie Bywaters, were hanged for the murder of Edith’s husband, Percy. The case was controversial because there was doubt surrounding the veracity of the evidence against Thompson (Bywaters had carried out the murder by stabbing Percy), and also because there were rumours that Edith’s hanging had been botched.

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Later that year (1923) the Howard League – a penal reform group that campaigned for humane prison conditions and for a reformatory approach to criminals – turned its attention to the abolition of the death penalty. The National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty joined the campaign in 1925. Then, in 1927 the Labour Party published its abolitionist ‘Manifesto on Capital Punishment’ under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald.

A few years later, in the 1930s, a wealthy businesswoman named Violet van der Elst became a well-known campaigner for abolition. She argued that capital punishment was uncivilised and harmful to society and that it was applied disproportionately to poor people. Her campaigns included organising the flight of aeroplanes trailing banners over the respective prison on the morning of an execution while she addressed crowds outside the prison gates through a loudhailer and leading them in prayer and song.

The first full parliamentary debate on capital punishment in the 20th century took place in 1929 and resulted in the establishment of a Select Committee on the issue. The committee reported its findings in 1930 and advocated an experimental five-year suspension of the death penalty; however, the report was largely ignored, as the issue was deemed to be low on the political agenda as other social issues took priority.

Calls for post-war reform

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, capital punishment became an increasingly prominent political and social issue. The election of the Labour government in 1945 was highly significant, as a higher proportion of Labour MPs supported abolition than Conservatives. Sydney Silverman, Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, led the parliamentary campaign to end the death penalty and attempted (ultimately unsuccessfully) to get abolition included in the Criminal Justice Act of 1948. However, the Act did end penal servitude, hard labour and flogging, and established a reformist system for punishing and treating offenders.

During this period of increased attention to capital punishment, certain contentious cases generated public disquiet. The executions of John Christie and Derek Bentley in 1953, to name but two, were pivotal.

The first case concerns the murder of a woman and child: in 1950, Timothy Evans, a 25-year-old van driver originally from Merthyr Tydfil and living in London, was hanged for murdering his wife, Beryl, and their baby daughter, Geraldine. It remained a relatively low-profile case until 1953, when the remains of seven women were found at 10 Rillington Place, a multi-occupancy house in Notting Hill. The home, it transpired, had been shared concurrently by Evans and his family with a man named John Christie, whom Evans had insisted throughout his trial had been responsible for the murder of Beryl and Geraldine. Following Christie’s conviction and execution in 1953, it seemed indisputable that Evans had been innocent.

The second case concerns that of 19-year-old Derek Bentley, who was hanged in January 1953 for the murder of a police officer, Sidney Miles. In fact it was his friend Christopher Craig who had shot Miles during the pair’s bungled break-in in Croydon, Surrey, while Bentley was detained by another officer. However, Craig was only 16 years old at the time of the crime and was therefore ineligible for the death penalty. Doubts about the justice of Bentley’s execution were intensified by his reported low intelligence and his tender age of 19 years. Bentley was posthumously pardoned in 1998.

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Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, is rightly remembered as having had an important influence upon views on the death penalty. Ellis was hanged in 1955 for the murder of her boyfriend, David Blakely, whom she shot outside a pub in Hampstead, London. Blakely had been violent and abusive towards Ellis and there was much public sympathy for the emotional strain that she had been under at the time. The murder was widely seen as a ‘crime of passion’ and therefore understandable, if not necessarily excusable.

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Until then women had almost always been reprieved from the death penalty, so there was widespread shock when Ellis was not. Her case attracted a huge amount of press attention and remains a highly-significant case connected to the abolition of the death penalty today, due to the emotional debate her case generated and its impact on British sentiment in the 1950s.

Labour MP Sydney Silverman’s continued attempts to pass abolitionist legislation in 1956 foundered, but the following year the Homicide Act of 1957 restricted the death penalty’s application to certain types of murder, such as in the furtherance of theft or of a police officer. Up until this point, death had been the mandatory sentence for murder and could only be mitigated via reprieve – a political rather than legal decision. This change in legislation reduced hangings to three or four per year, but capital punishment still remained highly contested.

On 13 August 1964, Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans became the last people to be hanged in Britain. They had murdered a taxi driver and doing so “in the furtherance of theft” made it a capital crime.

In 1965, the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act suspended the death penalty for an initial five-year period and was made permanent in 1969. The act had originally started as a private members’ bill introduced by Silverman and was sponsored by MPs from all three main parties, including Michael Foot and Shirley Williams from Labour; Conservative Chris Chataway and Liberal Jeremy Thorpe.

Capital punishment was in 1998 abolished for treason and piracy with violence, making Britain fully abolitionist, both in practice and in law, and enabling ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lizzie Seal is a reader in criminology at the University of Sussex. Her books include Capital Punishment in 20th-Century Britain: Audience, Justice, Memory (Routledge, 2014).

This article was first published by History Extra in March 2018

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Imperatives, acknowledgements.

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A Factful Perspective on Capital Punishment

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David T Johnson, A Factful Perspective on Capital Punishment, Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 11, Issue 2, July 2019, Pages 334–345, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huz018

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Substantial progress has been made towards worldwide abolition of capital punishment, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible. Since 2000, the pace of abolition has slowed, but by several measures the number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Several causes help explain the decline, including political leadership from the front and an increased tendency to regard capital punishment as a human rights issue rather than as a matter of domestic criminal justice policy. There are significant obstacles in the movement to eliminate state killing in the world, but some strategies could contribute to additional decline in the years to come.

People tend to notice the bad more than the good, and this ‘negativity instinct’ is apparent when it comes to capital punishment ( Rosling et al. 2018 : 48). For example, two decades ago, Leon Radzinowicz (1999 : 293), the founder of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, declared that he ‘did not expect any substantial further decrease’ in the use of capital punishment because ‘most of the countries likely to embrace the abolitionist cause’ had already done so. In more recent years, other analysts have claimed that the human rights movement is in crisis, and that ‘nearly every country seems to be backsliding’ ( Moyn 2018 ). If this assessment is accurate, it should be cause for concern for opponents of capital punishment because a heightened regard for human rights is widely regarded as the key cause of abolition since the 1980s ( Hood and Hoyle 2009 ).

To be sure, everything is not fine with respect to capital punishment. Most notably, the pace of abolition has slowed in recent years, and executions have increased in several countries, including Iran and Taiwan (in the 2010s), Pakistan (2014–15), and Japan (2018). But too much negativity will not do. I adopt a factful perspective about the future of capital punishment: I see substantial progress toward worldwide abolition, and this gives me hope that further progress is possible ( Rosling et al. 2018 ).

This article builds on Roger Hood’s seminal study of the movement to abolish capital punishment, which found ‘a remarkable increase in the number of abolitionist countries’ in the 1980s and 1990s ( Hood 2001 : 331). It proceeds in four parts. Section 1 shows that in the two decades or so since 2000 the pace of abolition has slowed but not ceased, and the total number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Section 2 explains how death penalty declines have been achieved in recent years. Section 3 identifies obstacles in the movement toward elimination of state killing in the modern world. And Section 4 suggests some priorities and strategies that could contribute to additional decline in the death penalty in the third decade of the third millennium.

These examples exclude estimates for the People’s Republic of China, which does not disclose reliable death penalty figures, but which probably executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined.

Table 1 displays the number of countries with each of these four death penalty statuses in five years: 1988, 1995, 2000, 2007, and 2017. Overall, the percentage of countries to retain capital punishment has declined by half over that period, from 56 per cent in 1988 to 28 per cent in 2017. But Table 2 shows that the pace of abolition has slowed since the 1990s, when 37 countries abolished. By comparison, only 23 countries abolished in the 2000s, with 11 more countries abolishing in the first eight years of the 2010s. The pace of abolition has declined partly because much of the lowest hanging fruit has already been picked.

Number of abolitionist and retentionist countries, 1988–2017

Note : Figures in parentheses show the percentage of the total number of countries in the world in that year.

Sources : Hood 2001 : 334 (for 1988, 1995, and 2000); Amnesty International annual reports (for 2007 and 2017).

Number of Countries That Abolished the Death Penalty by Decade, 1980s – 2010s

Sources : Death Penalty Information Center; Amnesty International annual reports.

Table 3 uses Hood’s figures for 1980 to 1999 ( Hood 2001 : 335) and figures from Hands Off Cain and Amnesty International to report the estimated number of executions and death sentences worldwide from 1980 to 2017. Because several countries (including China, the world’s leading user of capital punishment) do not disclose reliable death penalty statistics, the figures in Table 3 cannot be considered precise measures of death sentencing and execution trends over time, but the numbers do suggest recent declines. For instance, the average number of death sentences per year in the 2010s (2,220) was less than half the annual average for the 2000s (4,576). Similarly, the average number of executions per year in the 2010s (867) was less than half the annual average for the 2000s (1,762). Moreover, while the average number of countries per year to impose a death sentence remained fairly flat in the four decades covered in Table 3 (58 countries in the 1980s, 68 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 58 in the 2010s), the average number of countries per year which carried out an execution declined by about one-third, from averages of 37 countries in the 1980s and 35 countries in the 1990s, to 25 countries in the 2000s and 23 countries in the 2010s. In short, fewer countries are using capital punishment, and fewer people are being condemned to death and executed.

Number of death sentences and executions worldwide, 1980–2017

Notes : (a) The numbers of reported and recorded death sentences and executions are minimum figures, and the true totals are substantially higher. (b) In 2009, Amnesty International stopped publishing estimates of the minimum number of executions per year in China.

Sources : Hood 2001 : 335 (1980–1999); Hands Off Cain (2001); Amnesty International annual reports (2002–2017).

In 2001, Hood (2001 : 336) reported that 26 countries had executed at least 20 persons in the five-year period 1994–1998. Table 4 compares those figures with figures for the same 26 countries in 2013–2017, and it also presents the annual rate of execution per million population for each country (in parentheses). The main pattern is striking decline. In 2009, Amnesty International stopped publishing estimates of the minimum number of executions per year in the People’s Republic of China, so trend evidence from that source is unavailable, but other sources indicate that executions in China have declined dramatically in the past two decades, from 15,000 or more per year in the late 1990s and early 2000s ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 237), to approximately 2,400 in 2013 ( Grant 2014 ) and 2,000 or so in 2016. Of the other 25 countries in Hood’s list of heavy users of capital punishment in the 1990s, 11 saw executions disappear (Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Congo, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Libya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe), eight had the execution rate decline by half or more (USA, Nigeria, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Yemen, Jordan, Afghanistan), and two experienced more modest declines (Saudi Arabia and Egypt). Altogether, 22 of the 26 heavy users of capital punishment in the latter half of the 1990s have experienced major declines in executions. Of the remaining four countries, one (Japan) saw its execution rate remain stable until executions surged when 13 former members of Aum Shinrikyo were hanged in July 2018 (for murders and terrorist attacks committed in the mid-1990s), while three (Iran, Pakistan, and Viet Nam) experienced sizeable increases in both executions and execution rates.

Executions and execution rates by country, 1994–1998 and 2013–2017

a The figure of 429 executions for Viet Nam is for the three years from August 2013 to July 2016.

Notes: Countries reported to have executed at least 20 persons in 1994–1998, and execution figures for the same countries in 2013–2017 (with annual rates of execution per million population for both periods in parentheses).

As explained in the text, in addition to the 26 countries that appeared in Table 3 of Hood (2001 : 336), India had at least 24 judicial executions in 1994–1998, Indonesia had four, and Iraq had an unknown number. The comparable figures for these countries in 2013–2017 (with the execution rate per million population in parentheses) are India = 2 (0.0003), Indonesia = 23 (0.09), and Iraq = 469 (2.78).

Sources : Hood 2001 : 336 (1994–1998); Amnesty International (2013–2017); the Death Penalty Database of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (for India, Indonesia, and Iraq); Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 430 (for India 1994–1998).

The execution rate increases in Table 4 are striking but exceptional. In Iran, the fourfold increase in the execution rate gives it the highest per capita execution rate in the world for 2013–2017, with 6.68 executions per million population per year. This is approximately four times higher than the estimated execution rate for China (1.5) in the same period. The increase in Viet Nam is also fourfold, from 0.38 executions per million population per year to 1.5, while the increase in Pakistan is tenfold, from 0.05 to 0.49. Nonetheless, Viet Nam’s substantially increased execution rate in the 2010s would not have ranked it among the top ten executing nations in the 1990s, while Pakistan’s increased rate in the 2010s would not have ranked it among the top 15 nations in the 1990s. Even among the heaviest users of capital punishment, times have changed.

At least two countries that did not appear on Hood’s heavy user list for the 1990s executed more than 20 people in 2013–2017. The most notable newcomer is Iraq, which executed at least 469 persons in this five-year period, with an execution rate of 2.78 per million population per year. And then there is Indonesia. In the five years from 1994 to 1998, this country (with the world’s largest Muslim population) executed a total of four people, while in 2013–2017 the number increased to 23, giving it an execution rate of 0.09 per year per million population—about the same as the (low) execution rates in Japan and Taiwan.

When Iraq and Indonesia are added to the heavy user list for 2013–2017, only five countries out of 28 have execution rates that exceed one execution per year per million population, giving them death penalty systems that can be deemed ‘operational’ in the sense that ‘judicial executions are a recurrent and important part’ of their criminal justice systems ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 22). By contrast, in 1994–1998, 14 of these 28 countries had death penalty systems that were ‘operational’.

India is a country with a large population that does not appear on the frequent executing list for either the 1990s or the 2010s. In 2013–2017, this country of 1.3 billion people executed only two people, giving it what is probably the lowest execution rate (0.0003) among the 56 countries that currently retain capital punishment. India has long used judicial execution infrequently, but its police and security forces continue to kill in large numbers. In the 22 years from 1996 through 2017, India’s legal system hanged only four people, giving it an annual rate of execution that is around 1/25,000th the rate of executions in China. But over the same period, India’s police and security forces have killed thousands illegally and extrajudicially, many in ‘encounters’ that officials try to justify with the lie that the bad guy fired first.

Two fundamental forces have been driving the death penalty down in recent decades ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 290–304). First, while prosperity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for abolition, economic development does tend to encourage declines in judicial execution and steps toward the cessation of capital punishment. Second, the general political orientation of government often has a strong influence on death penalty policy, at both ends of the execution spectrum. High-execution rate nations tend to be authoritarian, as in China, Viet Nam, North Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. Conversely, low-execution rate nations tend to be democracies with institutionalized limits on governmental power, as in most of the countries of Europe and in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea, and India. Of course, these are tendencies, not natural laws. Exceptions exist, including the USA at the high end of the execution spectrum, and Myanmar and Nepal at the low end.

In addition to economic development and democratization, concerns about wrongful convictions and the execution of innocents have made some governments more cautious about capital punishment. In the USA, for example, the discovery of innocence has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to sharp declines in the use of capital punishment by prosecutors and juries across the country ( Baumgartner et al. 2008 ; Garrett 2017 ). In China, too, wrongful convictions and executions help explain both declines in the use of capital punishment and legal reforms of the institution ( He 2016 ).

The question of capital punishment is fundamentally a matter of human rights, not an isolated issue of criminal justice policy.

Death penalty policy should not be governed by national priorities but by adherence to international human rights standards.

Since capital punishment is never justified, a national government may demand that other nations’ governments end executions. ( Zimring 2003 : 27)

As the third premise of this orthodoxy suggests, political pressure has contributed to the decline of capital punishment. This influence has been especially striking in Europe, where abolition of capital punishment is an explicit and absolute condition for becoming a member of the European Union. In other countries, too, from Singapore and South Korea to Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the missionary zeal of European governments committed to abolition has led to the elimination of capital punishment or to major declines in its usage.

Political leadership has also fostered the death penalty’s decline. There are few iron rules of abolition, but one seems to be that when the death penalty is eliminated, it invariably happens despite the fact of majority public support for the institution at the time of abolition. This—‘leadership from the front’—is such a common pattern, and public resistance to abolition is so stubborn, that some analysts believe ‘the straightest road to abolition involves bypassing public opinion entirely’ ( Hammel 2010 : 236). There appear to be at least two political circumstances in which the likelihood of leadership from the front rises and the use of capital punishment falls ( Zimring 2003 : 22): after the collapse of an authoritarian government, when new leaders aim to distance themselves from the repressive practices of the previous regime (as in West Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Cambodia, and Timor Leste); and after a left-liberal party gains control of government (as in Austria, Great Britain, France, South Korea, and Taiwan).

Although use of the death penalty continues to decline, there are countervailing forces that continue to present obstacles to abolition, as they have for decades. First and foremost, there is an argument about national sovereignty made by many states, that death penalty policy and practice are not human rights issues but rather matters of criminal justice policy that should be decided domestically, according to the values and traditions of each individual country. There is the role of religion—especially Islamic beliefs, where in some countries and cultures it is held that capital punishment must not be opposed because it has been divinely ordained. There are claims that capital punishment deters criminal behaviour and drug trafficking, though there is little evidence to support this view ( National Research Council 2012 ; Muramatsu et al. 2018 ). And there is the continued use of capital punishment in the USA, which helps to legitimate capital punishment in other countries ( Hood 2001 : 339–44).

The death penalty also survives in some places because it performs welcome functions for some interests. For instance, following the Arab Spring movements of 2010–2012, Egypt and other Middle Eastern governments employed capital punishment against many anti-government demonstrators and dissenters. In other retentionist countries, capital punishment has little to do with its instrumental value for government and crime control and much to do with the fact that it is ‘productive, performative, and generative—that it makes things happen—even if much of what happens is in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse rather than the biological realm of life and death’ or the penological realms of retribution and deterrence ( Garland 2010 : 285). For elected officials, the death penalty is a political token to be used in electoral contests. For prosecutors and judges, it is a practical instrument that enables them to harness the rhetorical power of death in the pursuit of professional objectives. For the mass media, it is an arena in which dramas can be narrated about the human condition. And for the onlooking public, it is a vehicle for moral outrage and an opportunity for prurient entertainment.

In addition to these long-standing obstacles to abolition, several other impediments have emerged in recent years. Most notably, as populism spreads ( Luce 2017 ) and democracy declines in many parts of the world ( Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018 ), an ‘anti-human rights agenda’ is forcing human rights proponents to rethink their assumptions and re-evaluate their strategies ( Alston 2017 ). Much of the new populist threat to democracy is linked to post-9/11 concerns about terrorism, which have been exploited to justify trade-offs between democracy and security. Of course, we are not actually living in a new age of terrorism. If anything, we have experienced a decline in terrorism from the decades in which it was less of a big deal in our collective consciousness ( Pinker 2011 : 353). But emotionally and rhetorically, terrorism is very much a big deal in the present moment, and the cockeyed ratio of fear to harm that is fostered by its mediated representations has been used to buttress support for capital punishment in many countries, including the USA (the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995), Japan (the sarin gas attacks of 1994 and 1995), China (in Xinjiang and Tibet), India (the Mumbai attacks of 1993 and 2008 and the 2001 attack on the Parliament in New Delhi), and Iraq (where executions surged after the post-9/11 invasion by the USA, and where most persons executed have been convicted of terrorism). More broadly, the present political resonance of terrorism has resulted in some abolitionist states assisting with the use of capital punishment in retentionist nations ( Malkani 2013 ).

Some analysts believe that the ‘abolition of capital punishment in all countries of the world will ensure that the killing of citizens by the state will no longer have any legitimacy and so even more marginalize and stigmatize extra-judicial executions’ ( Hood and Hoyle 2008 : 6). Others claim that the abolition of capital punishment is ‘one of the great, albeit unfinished, triumphs of the post-Second World War human rights movement’ ( Hodgkinson 2004 : 1). But states kill extrajudicially too, and sometimes the scale so far exceeds the number of judicial executions that death penalty reductions and abolitions seem like small potatoes. The most striking example is occurring under President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines: thousands of extrajudicial executions in a country that abolished capital punishment (for the second time!) in 2006.The case of the Philippines illustrates a pattern that has been seen before and will be seen again in polities with weak law, strong executives, and fearful and frustrated citizens ( Johnson and Fernquest 2018 ). State killing often survives and sometimes thrives after capital punishment is abolished (as in Mexico, Brazil, Nepal, and Cambodia, among other countries). And in countries where capital punishment has not been abolished, extrajudicial executions are frequently carried out even after the number of judicial executions has fallen to near zero (as in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Thailand).

Despite these obstacles to abolition, the decline of capital punishment seems likely to continue in the years to come. The trajectory of this institution is shaped by political and cultural processes over which human rights practices have little influence ( Garland 2010 : Chapter 5), but priorities and strategies do matter. In this section I suggest five imperatives for the future.

First, opponents of capital punishment should recognize the limited importance of public opinion and the generally disappointing results of public education campaigns. There is in fact ‘no real evidence of a public relations campaign ever having had a significant, sustained effect on mass public opinion on capital punishment’ ( Hammel 2010 : 39). Such campaigns are not useless ( Singer 2016 ), but when they make a difference they usually do so by influencing the views of elites. To put the point a little differently, cultural change can stimulate death penalty reform, but the cultural shifts that matter most are those that operate ‘on and through state actors’ ( Garland 2010 : 143). This is where abolitionists should focus their efforts at persuasion.

Second, legal challenges to capital punishment should continue, for they have been effective in Africa, the former British colonies of the Caribbean, the USA, and many other countries (see the Death Penalty Project, https://www.deathpenaltyproject.org ). Moreover, legal challenges tend to be most effective when they come not from individual attorneys but from teams of attorneys and their non-attorney allies—social workers, scholars, mitigation investigators, and the like ( Garrett 2017 : Chapters 5–6). The basic strategy of successful teams is to ‘Make the law do what it promises. Make it be perfect’ ( Von Drehle 2006 : 196). One result is the growing recognition that state killing is incompatible with legal values. Another is a shift in focus from what the death penalty does for people to what it does to them. The evidence of the death penalty’s decline summarized in the first section of this article suggests that country after country has realized that retaining capital punishment breeds disrespect for law by exposing many of its shortcomings ( Sarat 2001 ). In some contexts, this recognition is best cultivated not by invoking ‘human rights’ as a ‘rhetorical ornament’ for anti-death penalty claims ( Dudai 2017 : 18), but simply by concentrating on what domestic law promises—and what it fails to deliver.

Third, research has contributed to the decline of capital punishment, both by undermining claims about its purported deterrent effects and by documenting flaws in its administration. In these ways, a growing empirical literature highlights ‘the lack of benefits associated with capital punishment and the burgeoning list of problems with its use’ ( Donohue 2016 : 53). Unfortunately, much of the available research concentrates on capital punishment in one country—the USA—which provides ‘a rather distorted and partial view of the death penalty’ worldwide ( Hood and Hoyle 2015 : 3). Going forward, scholars should explore questions about capital punishment in the many under-researched retentionist nations of Asia and the Middle East, and they should focus their dissemination efforts on the legal teams and governmental elites that have the capacity to challenge and change death penalty policy and practice, as described above in the first and second imperatives.

Fourth, abolition alone is not enough, in two senses. For one, it is not acceptable to replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without parole which is itself a cruel punishment that represents ‘life without hope’ and disrespect for human rights and human dignity ( Hood 2001 : 346). Moreover, when life without parole sentences are established, far more offenders tend to receive them than the number of offenders actually condemned to death. Overall, the advent of life without parole sometimes results in small to modest reductions in execution, but its main effect on the criminal process is ‘penal inflation’ ( Zimring and Johnson 2012 ). For most human rights practitioners, this is hardly a desirable set of outcomes. In addition, abolition is a hollow victory when extrajudicial executions continue or increase afterwards, yet this occurs often. The nexus between judicial and extrajudicial executions is poorly understood and much in need of further study, but the available evidence from countries such as Mexico and the Philippines suggests that ending judicial executions may do little to diminish state killing. In the light of this legal realism, a single-issue stress on abolishing capital punishment because it is inconsistent with human rights might well be considered more spectacle than substance ( Nagaraj 2017 : 23).

Finally, while the present moment is in some ways an ‘extraordinarily dangerous time’ for human rights advocates ( Alston 2017 : 14), there is room for optimism that the death penalty may be nearing the ‘end of its rope’ ( Garrett 2017 ). Overall, a factful consideration of contemporary capital punishment suggests that the situation in the world today is both bad and better ( Rothman 2018 ). A factful perspective on capital punishment also makes it reasonable to be a ‘possibilist’ about the future of this form of state killing ( Rosling et al. 2018 : 69). Substantial progress has been made toward worldwide abolition, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible.

Special thanks to Professor Roger Hood for his foundational studies of the death penalty worldwide.

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Garrett B. L. 2017 . End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

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Hammel A. 2010 . Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective . Palgrave Macmillan .

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Hood R. , Hoyle C. . 2008 . The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (4th ed.). New York : Oxford University Press .

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Hood R. , Hoyle C. . 2015 . The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (5th ed.). New York : Oxford University Press .

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Did you know that the last execution in the UK took place in the 1960s? Capital punishment was used in the UK for centuries. The last execution in the UK was on 13 August 1964. Capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and eventually abolished for murder in 1969. Then in 1998, capital punishment for treason and piracy with violence was abolished, making Britain fully abolitionist both in practice and in law.

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History of capital punishment in the UK

Although the death penalty is mentioned in the fifth century BC in the code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, it was not applied in Great Britain until the fifth century AD.

Capital punishment , also called the death penalty, is the execution of an offender (criminal) sentenced to death after being convicted of a crime by a court of law.

A brief timeline of the death penalty in Great Britain:

British forms of punishment throughout history

As mentioned above, the main form of punishment was hanging. However, over the centuries, other methods have been used.

Some convicts were somewhat ‘luckier’ and were executed by decapitation. This method was considered the least brutal and was used until the 18th Century. Nobles and kings were often executed by using this method.

If you were in the military, the main form of execution was death by firing squad.

Reform of capital punishment

Death penalty reform began in the 19th Century, but it would take until the end of the 20th Century for capital punishment to be abolished entirely.

19th Century

Sir Samuel Romilly (Figure 1), a British lawyer, politician, and legal reformer, initiated the reform of capital punishment that eventually led to its complete abolition. In 1808, Romilly succeeded in abolishing the death penalty for lesser offences. This began a reform that would continue for the next 50 years. In 1810, Romilly addressed the House of Commons on the death penalty and said:

“[there is] no country on the face of the earth in which there [have] been so many different offences according to law to be punished with death as in England” 1

Several laws were enacted in the 19th century:

While these laws ensured that many crimes were no longer punishable by death, the death penalty remained mandatory for treason and murder unless there was a royal pardon.

20th Century

The 20th Century saw an even greater reform of the death penalty when the following laws were enacted.

There are two other notable wartime events in Britain involving the death penalty:

Ten German agents were executed during World War I under the Defence of the Realm Act of 1914.

Sixteen spies were executed during World War II under the Treachery Act of 1940.

At this point, there was no real support for the complete abolition of the death penalty, but activists were gaining momentum.

Campaigns for the abolition of capital punishment

In the 19th Century, prominent figures in Britain began to speak out against the death penalty, such as Sir Samuel Romilly, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray.

Campaigns against capital punishment usually focused on specific cases that aroused public sympathy. Examples include:

One of the most prominent and well-known campaigners for abolition in the 20th Century was the wealthy businesswoman Violet van der Elst (Figure 2).Although the first full parliamentary debate of the 20th Century on capital punishment took place in 1929, the reports were largely ignored. The issue was considered a low priority on the political agenda.

Reasons for the abolition of capital punishment

Campaigns against capital punishment were based on moral and humanitarian grounds. Many activists believed that the infliction of pain was considered corrupting and uncivilised and that the death penalty did not provide redemption for the criminal.Violet van der Elst argued that capital punishment was uncivilised and harmful to society. She also argued that it is disproportionately applied to poor people.

Capital punishment became an increasingly important political and social issue. In 1948, the Criminal Justice Act was passed. This act abolished penal servitude, prison divisions, and flogging.

Penal servitude was the punishment of being sent to prison and forced to do hard physical labour.

The public increasingly drew their attention to capital punishment in the postwar period. The following three cases were crucial in influencing views on the death penalty:

Abolition of capital punishment

Sydney Silverman was a British Labour politician, elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1933, and for over 20 years, he committed himself to the abolition of capital punishment. In 1965 he introduced the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act . This act suspended the death penalty for 5 years, and it was replaced with a mandatory life sentence.

Abolition is the action of officially ending or stopping something

• On 16 December 1969, the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act was made permanent, and with it, capital punishment for murder was abolished.

It was, however, not until 25 July 1973, with the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act , that capital punishment was abolished in Northern Ireland.

The last execution in the UK took place on 13 August 1964, with the hanging of Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans. Even though the Homicide Act was already in place, considering they murdered a taxi driver and doing so ‘in the furtherance of theft’, it made it a capital crime.

Final abolition

While the abolition of capital punishment for murder had been in place since 1969, and no capital punishment in any sense had been carried out in the UK, there was no full abolition yet. The following events led to full abolition of capital punishment:

In 1998, with the Human Rights Act and the Crime and Disorder Act, the death penalty was now fully abolished.

End of capital punishment in Europe

Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries, with the exception of Belarus and Russia.

The complete ban on capital punishment is enacted in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU) , as well as in the adopted protocols of the European Convention of Human Rights of the Council of Europe .

Some facts about the abolition of capital punishment in Europe:

San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands were the first countries to abolish capital punishment.

Belarus, not a party of the European Convention on Human Rights, still practises capital punishment carried out by shooting, with the most recent two executions carried out in 2019

Russia has suspended capital punishment indefinitely since 1996. It is, however, still incorporated in its law

In 2012, Latvia became the last EU member to abolish capital punishment in wartime.

Capital punishment has been constitutionally abolished in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995, but it was not until 4 October 2019 that capital punishment was erased entirely from the Constitution of Republika Srpska, 1 entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Capital Punishment in UK - Key takeaways

• Capital punishment in the UK dates back to at least the 5th Century.
• Sir Samuel Romilly started capital punishment reform in the early 19th Century.
• Judgement of Death Act 1823.
• Substitution of Punishment of Death Act 1841.
• Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868.
• While the three acts ensured many crimes were no longer punishable by death, capital punishment remained mandatory for treason and murder unless there was a royal pardon.
• In 1957, the Homicide Act was established. This act brought in the distinction between capital and non-capital murder . Only the former carried an automatic death sentence.
• In 1998, with the Human Rights Act and the Crime and Disorder Act, the death penalty was fully abolished.
• Inside Time Reports. Death penalty abolished. Insidetime. 27 November 2020
• Infanticide Act 1938. Legislation.gov.uk.

Frequently Asked Questions about Capital Punishment in UK

--> when did capital punishment of children end in the uk.

In 1908 with the Children Act.

--> When was the end of capital punishment?

The complete abolition of capital punishment was in 1998 with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

--> Who abolished the death penalty?

The abolishment of the death penalty began with Sydney Silverman, which started with the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act of 1965.

--> Has capital punishment been abolished in Europe?

Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries, with the exception of Belarus and Russia. 

--> Why should capital punishment be abolished?

Campaigns against capital punishment have called it morally wrong and inhumane. It was uncivilised and harmful to society. Violet van der Elst also argued that it was applied disproportionally to poor people. 

What is the definition of capital punishment?

Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the execution of an offender (criminal) sentenced to death after being convicted of a crime by a court of law.

What was the Bloody Code?

In the 1700s, the number of capital crimes rose to 222. This legal system is called the Bloody Code. It led to reform on capital punishment in 1823–1837 when capital crimes were reduced to 100.

He was a British lawyer, politician and legal reformer. He was also the person who started the reform of capital punishment, eventually ending capital punishment altogether. 

It ensured that many crimes were no longer punishable by death. However, capital punishment remained mandatory for treason and murder unless there was a royal pardon.

Which acts and events of the 20th Century saw an even bigger reform of capital punishment? 

• Children Act 1908.
• Infanticide Act 1922 and 1937.
• Death sentence for pregnant women was abolished in 1931.
• Children and Young Persons Act 1933.
• Infanticide Act (Northern Ireland) 1939.

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Expert Commentary

The research on capital punishment: Recent scholarship and unresolved questions

2014 review of research on capital punishment, including studies that attempt to quantify rates of innocence and the potential deterrence effect on crime.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Alexandra Raphel and John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource January 5, 2015

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/criminal-justice/research-capital-punishment-key-recent-studies/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Over the past year the death penalty has again come into focus as a major public policy and political issue, catalyzed by several high-profile events.

The botched execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014 was seen as a potential turning point in the debate, bringing increased attention to the mechanisms by which persons are executed. That was followed by a number of other closely scrutinized cases, and the year ended with few executions relative to years past. On December 31, 2014, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley commuted the sentences of the remaining four prisoners on death row in that state. In 2013, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty after Connecticut in 2012 and New Mexico in 2009.

Meanwhile, polling data suggests some softening of public attitudes, though the majority Americans continue to support capital punishment. Gallop noted in October 2014 that the level of public support (60%) is at its lowest in 40 years. A Washington Post -ABC News poll in mid-2014 found that more Americans support life sentences, rather than the death penalty, for convicted murderers. Further, recent polls from the Pew Research Center indicate that only a bare majority of Americans now support capital punishment, 55%, down from 78% in 1996.

Scholarly research sheds light on a number of important aspects of this issue:

False convictions

One key reason for the contentious debate is the concern that states are executing innocent people. How many people are unjustly facing the death penalty? By definition, it is difficult to obtain a reliable answer to this question. Presumably if judges, juries, and law enforcement were always able to conclusively determine who was innocent, those defendants would simply not be convicted in the first place. When capital punishment is the sentence, however, this issue takes on new importance.

Some believe that when it comes to death-penalty cases, this is not a huge cause for concern. In his concurrent opinion in the 2006 Supreme Court case Kansas v. Marsh , Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the execution error rate was minimal, around 0.027%. However, a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the figure could be higher. Authors Samuel Gross (University of Michigan Law School), Barbara O’Brien (Michigan State University College of Law), Chen Hu (American College of Radiology) and Edward H. Kennedy (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) examine data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice relating to exonerations from 1973 to 2004 in an attempt to estimate the rate of false convictions among death row defendants. (Determining innocence with full certainty is an obvious challenge, so as a proxy they use exoneration — “an official determination that a convicted defendant is no longer legally culpable for the crime.”) In short, the researchers ask: If all death row prisoners were to remain under this sentence indefinitely, how many of them would have eventually been found innocent (exonerated)?

Interestingly, the authors also note that advances in DNA identification technology are unlikely to have a large impact on false conviction rates because DNA evidence is most often used in cases of rape rather than homicide. To date, only about 13% of death row exonerations were the result of DNA testing. The Innocence Project , a litigation and public policy organization founded in 1992, has been deeply involved in many such cases.

Death penalty deterrence effects: What do we know?

A chief way proponents of capital punishment defend the practice is the idea that the death penalty deters other people from committing future crimes. For example, research conducted by John J. Donohue III (Yale Law School) and Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) applies economic theory to the issue: If people act as rational maximizers of their profits or well-being, perhaps there is reason to believe that the most severe of punishments would serve as a deterrent. (The findings of their 2009 study on this issue, “Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder,” are inconclusive.) In contrast, one could also imagine a scenario in which capital punishment leads to an increased homicide rate because of a broader perception that the state devalues human life. It could also be possible that the death penalty has no effect at all because information about executions is not diffused in a way that influences future behavior.

In 1978 — two years after the Supreme Court issued its decision reversing a previous ban on the death penalty ( Gregg v. Georgia ) — the National Research Council (NRC) published a comprehensive review of the current research on capital punishment to determine whether one of these hypotheses was more empirically supported than the others. The NRC concluded that “available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.”

Researchers have subsequently used a number of methods in an effort to get closer to an accurate estimate of the deterrence effect of the death penalty. Many of the studies have reached conflicting conclusions, however. To conduct an updated review, the NRC formed the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, comprised of academics from economics departments and public policy schools from institutions around the country, including the Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago and Duke University.

In 2012, the Committee published an updated report that concluded that not much had changed in recent decades: “Research conducted in the 30 years since the earlier NRC report has not sufficiently advanced knowledge to allow a conclusion, however qualified, about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates.” The report goes on to recommend that none of the reviewed reports be used to influence public policy decisions on the death penalty.

Why has the research not been able to provide any definitive answers about the impact of the death penalty? One general challenge is that when it comes to capital punishment, a counter-factual policy is simply not observable. You cannot simultaneously execute and not execute defendants, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the death penalty. The Committee also highlights a number of key flaws in the research designs:

• There are both capital and non-capital punishment options for people charged with serious crimes. So, the relevant question on the deterrent effect of capital punishment specifically “is the differential deterrent effect of execution in comparison with the deterrent effect of other available or commonly used penalties.” None of the studies reviewed by the Committee took into account these severe, but noncapital punishments, which could also have an effect on future behaviors and could confound the estimated deterrence effect of capital punishment.
• “They use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the capital punishment component of a sanction regime”
• “The existing studies use strong and unverifiable assumptions to identify the effects of capital punishment on homicides.”

In a 2012 study, “Deterrence and the Dealth Penalty: Partial Identificaiton Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sections,” authors Charles F. Manski (Northwestern University) and John V. Pepper (University of Virginia) focus on the third challenge. They note: “Data alone cannot reveal what the homicide rate in a state without (with) a death penalty would have been had the state (not) adopted a death penalty statute. Here, as always when analyzing treatment response, data must be combined with assumptions to enable inference on counterfactual outcomes.”

However, even though the authors do not arrive at a definitive conclusion, the National Research Council Committee notes that this type of research holds some value: “Rather than imposing the strong but unsupported assumptions required to identify the effect of capital punishment on homicides in a single model or an ad hoc set of similar models, approaches that explicitly account for model uncertainty may provide a constructive way for research to provide credible albeit incomplete answers.”

Another strategy researchers have taken is to limit the focus of studies on potential short-term effects of the death penalty. In a 2009 paper, “The Short-Term Effects of Executions on Homicides: Deterrence, Displacement, or Both?” authors Kenneth C. Land and Hui Zheng of Duke University, along with Raymond Teske Jr. of Sam Houston State University, examine monthly execution data (1980-2005) from Texas, “a state that has used the death penalty with sufficient frequency to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” They conclude that “evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the months of or after executions.” Depending on which model they use, these deterrent effects range from 1.6 to 2.5 homicides.

The NRC’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty commented on the findings, explaining: “Land, Teske and Zheng (2009) should be commended for distinguishing between periods in Texas when the use of capital punishment appears to have been erratic and when it appears to have been systematic. But they fail to integrate this distinction into a coherently delineated behavioral model that incorporates sanctions regimes, salience, and deterrence. And, as explained above, their claims of evidence of deterrence in the systematic regime are flawed.”

A more recent paper (2012) from the three authors, “The Differential Short-Term Impacts of Executions on Felony and Non-Felony Homicides,” addresses some of these concerns. Published in Criminology and Public Policy , the paper reviews and updates some of their earlier findings by exploring “what information can be gained by disaggregating the homicide data into those homicides committed in the course of another felony crime, which are subject to capital punishment, and those committed otherwise.” The results produce a number of different findings and models, including that “the short-lived deterrence effect of executions is concentrated among non-felony-type homicides.”

Other factors to consider

The question of what kinds of “mitigating” factors should prevent the criminal justice system from moving forward with an execution remains hotly disputed. A 2014 paper published in the Hastings Law Journal , “The Failure of Mitigation?” by scholars at the University of North Carolina and DePaul University, investigates recent executions of persons with possible mental or intellectual disabilities. The authors reviewed 100 cases and conclude that the “overwhelming majority of executed offenders suffered from intellectual impairments, were barely into adulthood, wrestled with severe mental illness, or endured profound childhood trauma.”

Two significant recommendations for reforming the existing process also are supported by some academic research. A 2010 study by Pepperdine University School of Law published in Temple Law Review , “Unpredictable Doom and Lethal Injustice: An Argument for Greater Transparency in Death Penalty Decisions,” surveyed the decision-making process among various state prosecutors. At the request of a state commission, the authors first surveyed California district attorneys; they also examined data from the other 36 states that have the death penalty. The authors found that prosecutors’ capital punishment filing decisions remain marked by local “idiosyncrasies,” meaning that “the very types of unfairness that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate” beginning in 1972 may still “infect capital cases.” They encourage “requiring prosecutors to adhere to an established set of guidelines.” Finally, there has been growing support for taping interrogations of suspects in capital cases, so as to guard against the phenomenon of false confessions .

Related reading: For an international perspective on capital punishment, see Amnesty International’s 2013 report ; for more information on the evolution of U.S. public opinion on the death penalty, see historical trends from Gallup .

Keywords: crime, prisons, death penalty, capital punishment

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Alexandra Raphel

John Wihbey

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Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

In its last six months, the United States government has put 13 prisoners to death. Do you think capital punishment should end?

By Nicole Daniels

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

In July, the United States carried out its first federal execution in 17 years. Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had in the previous six decades.

The death penalty has been abolished in 22 states and 106 countries, yet it is still legal at the federal level in the United States. Does your state or country allow the death penalty?

Do you believe governments should be allowed to execute people who have been convicted of crimes? Is it ever justified, such as for the most heinous crimes? Or are you universally opposed to capital punishment?

In “ ‘Expedited Spree of Executions’ Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny ,” Adam Liptak writes about the recent federal executions:

In 2015, a few months before he died, Justice Antonin Scalia said he w o uld not be surprised if the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty. These days, after President Trump’s appointment of three justices, liberal members of the court have lost all hope of abolishing capital punishment. In the face of an extraordinary run of federal executions over the past six months, they have been left to wonder whether the court is prepared to play any role in capital cases beyond hastening executions. Until July, there had been no federal executions in 17 years . Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades.

The article goes on to explain that Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued a dissent on Friday as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, complaining that it had not sufficiently resolved legal questions that inmates had asked. The article continues:

If Justice Breyer sounded rueful, it was because he had just a few years ago held out hope that the court would reconsider the constitutionality of capital punishment. He had set out his arguments in a major dissent in 2015 , one that must have been on Justice Scalia’s mind when he made his comments a few months later. Justice Breyer wrote in that 46-page dissent that he considered it “highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” which bars cruel and unusual punishments. He said that death row exonerations were frequent, that death sentences were imposed arbitrarily and that the capital justice system was marred by racial discrimination. Justice Breyer added that there was little reason to think that the death penalty deterred crime and that long delays between sentences and executions might themselves violate the Eighth Amendment. Most of the country did not use the death penalty, he said, and the United States was an international outlier in embracing it. Justice Ginsburg, who died in September, had joined the dissent. The two other liberals — Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — were undoubtedly sympathetic. And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who held the decisive vote in many closely divided cases until his retirement in 2018, had written the majority opinions in several 5-to-4 decisions that imposed limits on the death penalty, including ones barring the execution of juvenile offenders and people convicted of crimes other than murder .

In the July Opinion essay “ The Death Penalty Can Ensure ‘Justice Is Being Done,’ ” Jeffrey A. Rosen, then acting deputy attorney general, makes a legal case for capital punishment:

The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward. The United States Constitution expressly contemplates “capital” crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790. The American people have repeatedly ratified that decision, including through the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 signed by President Bill Clinton, the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh under President George W. Bush and the decision by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department to seek the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber and Dylann Roof.

Students, read the entire article , then tell us:

Do you support the use of capital punishment? Or do you think it should be abolished? Why?

Do you think the death penalty serves a necessary purpose, like deterring crime, providing relief for victims’ families or imparting justice? Or is capital punishment “cruel and unusual” and therefore prohibited by the Constitution? Is it morally wrong?

Are there alternatives to the death penalty that you think would be more appropriate? For example, is life in prison without the possibility of parole a sufficient sentence? Or is that still too harsh? What about restorative justice , an approach that “considers harm done and strives for agreement from all concerned — the victims, the offender and the community — on making amends”? What other ideas do you have?

Vast racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty have been found. For example, Black people are overrepresented on death row, and a recent study found that “defendants convicted of killing white victims were executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims.” Does this information change or reinforce your opinion of capital punishment? How so?

The Federal Death Penalty Act prohibits the government from executing an inmate who is mentally disabled; however, in the recent executions of Corey Johnson , Alfred Bourgeois and Lisa Montgomery , their defense teams, families and others argued that they had intellectual disabilities. What role do you think disability or trauma history should play in how someone is punished, or rehabilitated, after committing a crime?

How concerned should we be about wrongfully convicted people being executed? The Innocence Project has proved the innocence of 18 people on death row who were exonerated by DNA testing. Do you have worries about the fair application of the death penalty, or about the possibility of the criminal justice system executing an innocent person?

About Student Opinion

• Find all of our Student Opinion questions in this column . • Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? Tell us about it . • Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning .

Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

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Essay: Law Essay on capital punishment in the UK

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Law Essay on capital punishment in the UK

The death penalty was abolished in 1965 as a result of the Sidney Silverman (MP) private member’s bill.  The debate on the concept of re-introduction did however take place although with increasing failure and with the current governance of the Human Rights Act 1998, the question is now posed, what would be the legal and political effects of the British re-introduction of the death penalty?

In order to answer this question it is important to give a brief overview of the history of death penalty reform in order to become aware of the core issues that motivated changes in the law that profoundly stretched over a period of time that included the Napoleonic wars, the industrial revolution, the rise of an educated, middle class, two world wars and their aftermath of social enlightenment.  The importance of this exercise will be to also reveal the type of social and political climate that would form the necessary pre-requisite for inspiration to finally abolish the death penalty.  Further to this, the effect of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998 will be assessed and comparison with the wording of the US Constitution will provide the subject of analysis for contrasts between pro and con death penalty policies as well as illustrate how capital punishment is allowed in a country that has a Bill of Rights.  In light of the UK’s commitments to the ECHR, the legal consequences of re-introduction of the death penalty will be revealed in part one, with a complimentary description in Part 2 of the political steps that the UK would have to take in order to realise this hypothetical goal.  Part One will end by giving a description of the contrasting commitments under international law treaties.

As already explained, part two will discuss the political consequences for the British re-introduction of the death penalty.  This means that, as well as stating the steps required for realisation of a death penalty policy, there will be a detailed analysis of UK internal politics, as well as the Country’s relationship with the political, international community and current weaknesses.  The purpose of this exercise will be twofold.  In the first place, it will be necessary to fully understand the position of the UK in global politics and, in the second place, this understanding will, give way to a more accurate representation of the political, international impact of re-introduction of Capital Punishment to the UK .

Part One – The Legal effects of the re-introduction of capital punishment

1.1    history, 1.1.2    the early days – reducing the scope of the offenc.

The first death penalty reforms were introduced by Samuel Romilly in 1808, who sought to remove this form of punishment from over two-hundred various crimes.  These crimes were referred to as England’s “Bloody Code” and included such offences as remaining in the company of gypsies for a minimum of one month , the vagrancy of soldiers and sailors  and ‘strong evidence of malice’ in children ranging between the ages of seven and fourteen years.  Following this early era of reform the early 1830s saw the removal of the penalty for petty crimes such as shop lifting, sacrilege and the theft of mail.  The emphasis at this time was a clear campaign to remove the disproportionate trends of the criminal justice system. 

The result of these reforms did however reveal a higher instance of convictions but it is widely held that poverty and starvation were an additional contributing factor to the occurrence of these lesser crimes . 

The reforms continued through to 1843 with the removal of gibbeting, which entailed the public display of the executed dead in cages and, finally, by 1861 the death penalty remained for only four separate and serious offences, which were murder, arson in royal dockyards, piracy with violence and, treason , of which the latter two crimes continued to carry the death sentence until the enactment of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. 

1.1.3    Limiting the mode of execution

As well as limiting the number of crimes that fell within the scope for the death penalty, the methods of execution were also reduced.  In 1868, public hanging was outlawed  and the punishment of being hung, drawn and quartered was condemned to the history books in 1870 .

By the start of the 20th century the compulsory form of death for murder was hanging. 

1.1.4    A picture of the early 20th century dilema

There did however exist the discretion of the jury to aid the ‘recommendation to mercy’ but this was fully reversible by the Home Secretary .  Further to this, appeals in the Court of Appeal were to be heard only once and only for the points of law that had amounted to the prima facie case for conviction.  House of Lords appeals were strictly allowable at the exclusive discretion of the Attorney General who was to decide whether the particular case involved significant points of law that merited further examination .  The result of any successful appeal was the reduction of sentencing to that of life imprisonment but the Home Secretary did later obtain the power to obtain the opinion of a medical panel to determine the mental capacity of the condemned offender .

1.1.5    After the world wars

The issue of controversy over the death penalty did not once again grab full media and political attention until after the end of the second world war, when capital punishment became a focus of the British media .  The delay in reform was of course a direct result of the suspension of legislative reform that took place during the war, and was the ultimate reason for the shelving of the original 1938 Commons vote to abolish the death sentence over an experimental period of five years .  Following the war there were in fact a number of lobbies both for and against the death penalty as well as overall concerns over the innocence of many of those condemned to die.  To date, since 1945, there have been three posthumous pardons for Mr Timothy Evans in 1966  and Mahmood Mattan and Derek Bently in 1998 . 

1.1.6    The emergence of new but flawed limitations to Capital Punishment

In 1948 the then Labour Government created the Royal Commission on the death penalty but it was not until the election of the Conservative Government when a true legislative compromise was introduced in the form of the Homicide Act 1957.  This act was in fact a direct result of the gross miscarriages of justice that had taken place in the years since the war and acted to reduce the scope of the sentence to a mere six kinds of murder.  The first was murder executed in the furtherance of theft, followed by murder as a result of shooting or causing an explosion.  The third scenario was murder carried out within the course of resisting arrest or while attempting to escape.  The fourth and fifth was the murder of a police officer or prison officer while in prison and finally, the sixth murder charge that carried the death penalty was when there were at least two murders on separate occasions.

It is clear that the ethos behind this restriction was to reserve the most profound of sentence to the most acute and extreme manifestations of the crime of murder, thereby theoretically condemning to death those few criminals who were deemed to deserve to die.

There were however three problems associated with this so-called compromise.  In the first place, while this rationale was a step up from the carte blanche capital punishment of all murderers it is clear from analysis of the selected forms of death bearing murders that there was no justifiable reason for such a profound distinction between murder by stabbing and murder by gunshot wound.  Secondly, the ultimate flaw here was that the distinctions were wholly based on the actus reus of the crime and not on the mens rea with the result that, in order to avoid the death penalty, perpetrators would become aware of the law and choose their method wisely.  Thirdly the provisions of the Homicide Act 1957 did absolutely nothing to curb the suspicions of miscarriages of justice that remained for such cases as that of James Hanratty, who was executed in April of 1962 for shooting Michael Gregsten . 

Finally, the last executions in Britain, which were of Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans took place in August 1964 who together murdered John West while robbing his home earlier in the same year. 

1.1.7    The abolishment of Capital Punishment in the UK

In 1965 Sidney Silverman produced his private members bill that proposed a five year trial for the abolishment of the death penalty, which was indoctrinated in the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act 1965. A further vote in 1969 in the House of Commons sealed the fate of the death penalty in Britain as it slipped into the history books and was abolished for good.  This status followed in 1973 in Northern Ireland and neither portion of the British Isles have looked back since. 

1.1.8    Since Abolishment

While there have been more that ten attempts to reintroduce the death penalty in the UK, the last pre-Human Rights Act, Commons vote for hanging as a result of shooting a police officer on duty resulted in a 197 majority in favour of continued abolition.  In addition to clear political favour against hanging, there are a number of high profile cases that, since the abolishment of the death penalty, would have resulted in death by hanging but were later revealed to have been gross miscarriages of justice of which the Birmingham Six is one of the most notable examples.

Until the enactment of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the death penalty remained in force for treason and piracy with violence although at no point in the time since the abolishment for murder were these sentences ever carried out.  Finally, sovereignty over the matter of the death penalty was officially removed in 1999 when Jack Straw signed the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention of Human Rights and in 2002, the Thirteenth Protocol was also signed.  The full effects of this are set out below in part 1.2.

1.2    Effects of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the ECHR

1.2.1    Relevant Provisions of the ECHR, Identifying the relationship between         the original convention and further human rights provisions.                 1.2.1.1    The general applicable provisions

The preamble of the ECHR (European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) states that signatories:     "reaffirming their profound belief in those fundamental freedoms which are the foundation of justice and peace in the world and are best maintained on the one hand by an effective political democracy and on the other hand by a common understanding and observance of the human rights upon which they depend; being resolved, as the governments of European countries which are like-minded and have a common heritage of political traditions, ideals, freedom and the rule of law, to take the first steps for the collective enforcement of certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration…" The concept of a foundation for justice and peace, as is stated above and was written in 1950, did not at first encompass abolishment of the death penalty but this changed with the enactment of the sixth protocol, which directly concerns the abolishment of the death penalty as an extrapolation of the more general provision under Article 2 of the Convention and stipulates the basic right to life.  Article 2(1) states:     “1. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.” It is this breadth of wording that facilitates both wide interpretation and, in relation to the right to life in particular, a wide scope for discretion to exclude or include issues based solely on the political climate of the day.  Indeed, at the time of the assignation to the ECHR in 1951, the campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty did not gather huge momentum in light of this provision.     1.2.1.2    The Addition of formal, specific ratifications on the                     abolishment of the death penalty. Jack Straw MP signed the 6th protocol of 1983 on January 29, 1999, in which Article 1 states that:     “The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.” While the provision is extremely clear cut on this basis, there was an exception provided for under Article 2 of Protocol 6, which provided that:     “A State may make provision in its law for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of imminent threat of war; such penalty shall be applied only in the instances laid down in the law and in accordance with its provisions. The State shall communicate to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe the relevant provisions of that law.” The exception to the death penalty abolishment to times of war was repealed following ratification of Protocol 13 in 2002, which came into force on 1 July, 2003.  This therefore made it also contrary to the European Convention to legislate for lawful capital punishment during times of war.      1.2.1.3    The overall impact of ratification of specific death penalty provisions Prior to enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, ratification of the ECHR alone meant that recourse could only be had to it when raised at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.  In relation to Articles 8 on the right to privacy and Article 14 on the prohibition of discrimination, there is a myriad of case law on this point, some of which was successful such as P v S & Cornwall County Council   on the coverage of gender reassignment as falling within the scope of Article.  However some cases did fall prey to the overtly wide provisions of the ECHR and failed.  An example is that of Grant v Southwest Trains Ltd  in which it was held that the definition of ‘sex’ under the provision of Article 14 did not encompass sexual orientation.  With regard to the 6th and 13th Protocols, there exists no such danger of judicial discretion in the exercise of provision interpretation for the simple reason that the wording of these annexes are sufficiently precise to ensure that all signatories to these protocols will harbour citizens who may consciously rely on the provisions under EU jurisdiction.  It will however be shown in part two that, despite this misgiving, there is a further political tool for the inclusion of abolition of the death penalty at European level, which is that indoctrination facilitates the use of this policy as a condition of EU Membership.  It is in precisely this area that Turkey is having severe setbacks on their journey to EU Membership, and this is set out below under Part 1.4. 

1.3  Comparison with the USA the need to repeal the human rights Act

Brief Background of the legal circumstances that permit the death penalty in the USA.

Judicial interpretation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments – Furman v Georgia

The death penalty in the USA is constantly debated on account of there being heated disagreement over whether or not Capital punishment is caught by the Eighth Amendment, which states that:

“Excessive Bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted ”.

The Fourteenth Amendment (Section 1) is also relevant for the consideration of applicable Constitution provisions that regulate the rights that are affected by the imposition of the death penalty.  This states that:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities o citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. ”     

In 1972, the case of Furman v Georgia  it was held that the imposition of the death penalty did amount to ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ that contradicted the Eighth Amendment and was also a moral affront to the perceptions of justice by the American people.  Justice Brennan remarked that:

“Today death is a uniquely and unusually severe punishment. When examined by the principles applicable under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, death stands condemned as fatally offensive to human dignity. The punishment of death is therefore "cruel and unusual," and the States may no longer inflict it as a punishment for crimes. ”

In relation to the Fourteenth Amendment, it was successfully argued that the obvious disparity in the provision of adequate legal advice was a clear cause of depravity of due process.  The crux of the argument on this matter surrounded the fact that the rich would be able to afford the best legal advice, the poor would be provided with the best legal advice and the middle classes would receive little aid and with their more modest financial resources, were able to afford counsel, although not the best.

1.3.1.2    Reinterpretation – Gregg v Georgi

The decision of Furman v Georgia was however overturned in Gregg v Georgia  in which Justice Brennan maintained his stance and dissented.  The judgement was however split eight to three, and of those who lent a hand to re-impose the death penalty it was stated that the Georgian law on the matter did not impose a cruel or unusual form of punishment as the death penalty in general constituted a form of retribution that would not be against the morals of the American people and that arguments against its effects as a significant deterrent were deemed to be inconclusive and therefore, unreliable.  With regard to retribution, Justice Stewart quoted from his own concurring opinion in Furman v Georgia, in which he stated that:

“The instinct for retribution is part of the nature of man, and channelling that instinct in the administration of criminal justice serves an important purpose in promoting the stability of a society governed by law. When people begin to believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal offenders the punishment they "deserve," then there are sown the seeds of anarchy — of self-help, vigilante justice, and lynch law ”

As retaliation to the above notion of anarchy, Justice Stewart quoted from the dissenting answer by Justice Powell, who said that in relation to anarchy:

“Retribution is no longer the dominant objective of the criminal law, ” but neither is it a forbidden objective, nor one inconsistent with our respect for the dignity of men ”

With regard to the accusation of breach of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Georgian statute was deemed to have been precise enough to prevent the capricious and arbitrary application of the death penalty on account of there being specific guidelines for the jury on the matter of deciding the case.  On the basis of this argument is was therefore held that there was adequate ‘due process’ that would prevent the death sentence from falling foul of the Fourteenth Amendment.  On this matter, Justice Stewart stated that the Georgian Statute:

“…focus(es) the jury’s attention on the particularized nature of the crime and the particularized characteristics of the individual defendant. While the jury is permitted to consider any aggravating or mitigating circumstances, it must find and identify at least one statutory aggravating factor before it may impose a penalty of death. In this way, the jury’s discretion is channelled. No longer can a jury wantonly and freakishly impose the death sentence; it is always circumscribed by the legislative guidelines… ”

1.3.2    Commentary of the Re-interpretation in Gregg v Georgi

Greenhalgh٭ states that there are two problems with this interpretation of Amendments in Gregg v Georgia.   Firstly, the opinions of the concurring judges weakly distinguished the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment with the death penalty on the basis of the mode of execution.  Recently, Georgia has abolished use of the electric chair and now only the lethal injection is the acceptable mode of execution that may be carried out in this State .  However, the method of execution continues to be the wrong focus for the ascertainment of Criminal Justice and the Supreme Court fully failed to argue that the deprivation of life or punishment, where the result is actual death, was both cruel and unusual.  The method of execution is therefore irrelevant and need not have been dissected as a point of distinction in law .

Secondly, Greenhalgh continues by stating that there was equally wrongful focus on the determination that due process under the Fourteenth Amendment was fulfilled on the basis of ten aggravating circumstances that were to correctly guide the jury.  There was equally inadequate examination of the argument over ability to afford the better counsel for the defence , as well as complete disregard for the issue of race disparity on death row .  The correct path to have taken was that due process is never fulfilled where counsel for the defendant is faced with the task of saving a man’s life every time he acts within his duty in a capital offence trial.  Further to this, due process is equally flawed where the prosecution is set the task of persuading the jury to condemn the defendant to death.  The argument here therefore, is that, in non warlike scenarios, and where self defence does not enter the equation, no one should be required to engage in the facilitation of involuntary killing as part of their career. There is also a second argument, namely that due process extends beyond the trial and continues throughout the sentence so that appeals may be lodged where new evidence comes to light.  Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont stated in 2001 that he was greatly concerned over the fact that, since 1976, 85 prisoners on death row were exonerated on the basis of new evidence and that a number of these had occurred only days before execution .  He asserts that the issue is not one of a mere state or two, but is nationwide, thereby making academic analysis of the US system an ideal national focus as opposed to mere State-to-State comparison.  The Senator states:

    “The appalling number of exonerations, and the fact that they span so many States—a substantial majority of the States that have the death penalty—makes it clearer than ever that the crisis I spoke of last year is real, and that it is national in its scope. This is not an “Illinois problem” or a “Texas problem. ”

Clearly, for those that are exonerated after death, there is utter futility and pointlessness with the exception of empty and shell like, posthumous dignity.  In order to combat this, the Innocence Protection Act was passed in 2001 with the aim of:

    “…reducing the risk that innocent persons may be executed. Most urgently, the bill would afford greater access to DNA testing by convicted offenders, and help States improve the quality of legal representation in capital cases. ”

This is once again an attempt to gloss over the deprivation of due process that is taken at the point of death and is clearly a savage desire to retain the death penalty to the expensive extent to installing legislation for the purpose of ensuring as fair a trial as possible.

1.3.3    Comparison with the ECHR – The requirement to abolish the Human Rights Act 1998

Like the wording of Article 2 of the ECHR, the scope of meaning for the vocabulary of both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments is utterly imprecise.  This therefore allows for the common but unannounced practice of reverse judgement whereby a decision is reached prior to the submission of counsel for both the prosecution and the defence and ratio are devised in order to justify he finding in law.

However, unlike the ECHR, there is no express prohibition of the death penalty, as located under protocols 6 and 13 to the Convention, which means that the whole question of abolishment lies in the exclusive hands of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Therefore, as a matter of jurisdiction, the Supreme Court is set the task of independently interpreting the Constitution, whereas the EU has made it perfectly clear that this issue is far too profound to be considered judicially. 

1.3.4    Is the UK’s only recourse to repeal the Human Rights Act?

The result for the UK is therefore clear and repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 would be wholly necessary in order to re-introduce the death penalty.  This is explained in more detail under part 1.4 in relation to the full spectrum of legal requirements and consequences of re-introducing the death penalty in the UK.

1.4    The legal Consequences for Britain as an EU Member State and the Current Turkey Situation

1.4.1    The Legal Consequences for Britain

The standpoint of the EU on the concept of the death penalty is outwardly precise and any attempt of the UK to introduce this form of sentencing would cause a direct breach of protocol 13, thereby going against the policy under the s 3 (1) of the Act, which states that all legislation is to be read as being in accordance with the provisions of the ECHR.  The enactment of incompatible legislation would fall foul of investigation by the House of Lords, who would be entitled under s 4 of the Act to decree that such legislation is incompatible.  Hypothetically speaking, should the House of Lords decide not to take this step, private individuals would be entitled to seek recourse to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg by pleading Protocol 13 outright and winning by a unanimous judicial decision on account of the UK ratification of this amendment to the ECHR.

If the UK were to repeal the entire Human Rights Act 1998, this in its own right would pave the way for a direct violation of Article 1 of the ECHR, which was ratified by the UK in 1951 and states that:

“The High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this Convention. ”

This too would be taken to the European Court of Human Rights  and again, the UK would be warned that failure to repeal any new Capital Punishment legislation would result in breach of the ECHR, thereby directly violating Article 6(2) of the Treaty on the European Union, which states that:

“The Union shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, as general principles of Community law.”

Therefore, in essence, if the UK is truly determined to re-introduce the death penalty, they would have to take the drastic step of leaving the EU.

1.4.2    A further demonstration of legal consequences – Turkey’s campaign         for EU Membership

The requirement to leave the EU in the event of re-introducing the death penalty is further demonstrated by the fact that the legal obligation for EU Membership entails the need to adhere to European Law and ratification of the Treaties, which in their own right, also specify that any country may join.  However, in addition to this, the 1993 EU summit in Copenhagen set out in the Copenhagen Criteria , specific conditions that would need to be satisfied in order to join the EU.  There are four such criteria of which three are largely political in nature.  The one and only legally based criteria is a proviso to the reception of EU law, which states that the candidate countries must have the requisite administrative infrastructure that would be able to uphold and utilize EU Law. The regular progress report of November 8, 2000  for Turkey showed that by that year, protocol 6 had not yet been signed and the death penalty had therefore still not been abolished .  The European Commission did however acknowledge that the de facto moratorium of 1984, to carrying out the process of abolishing the death penalty had been adhered to.  An example of the positive behaviour during this time was the promise of stay of proceedings for the prisoner Abdullah Öcalan, who was the militant leader of the Kurdish organisation, the PKK.  This is discussed further in part two in a political context. 

By the time of the most recent 2004 Report , Turkey has now in fact abolished the Death Penalty and did so in 2002 by signing the Sixth Protocol.  Further to this, on January 9th, 2004,  Numar Hazar, as Turkey’s permanent representative of the Council of Europe, signed Protocol 13 in Strasbourg .  This therefore means that Turkey now outlaws the death penalty both in and out with peacetime and the country is well on its way to developing the legal structure that is necessary for EU Membership.

1.5    The legal effects of international law treaties – A ‘Contrast’

By contrast to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, international treaties do not carry the same bite and are not immediately reprehensible against in the event of breach.  There is however an hierarchy of provisions, which are best described in descending order of rank.

1.5.1    The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

During the direct aftermath of the Second World War and the Nuremberg Trials, the newly founded United Nations drafted and passed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  This document expresses international recognition of the guarantee of equality for all individuals.  The contents of the declaration are themselves very much aimed at anti-discrimination and this is most clearly expressed in Article 2.  However, in terms of the death penalty, there are two reasons why this specific declaration is not helpful.  Firstly there are two useful sources of language for the death penalty.  The first is the right to life under Article 3 and the second is Article 5 which states that:

“the right not to be tortured or subject to any cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment  ”

However, pro-capital punishment lobbyists would argue that there is nothing in the declaration that prohibits retribution and that therefore, the right to life can be forfeited in extreme and justifiable circumstances .  Further to this and in contrast, anti-capital punishment lobbyists argue that torture and degrading punishment are integral to punishment by death, regardless of the reason .  Interpretation is therefore a question of discretion.

The second reason why the Universal Declaration is not useful is that, as an international agreement, assignation to it is wholly voluntary and, as will be shown below in relation to global political influences, super powers adhere to international agreements as and when they choose to do so but the feeling of obligation is wholly absent.

1.5.2    The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

1.5.2.1    The Relevant Provisions

The ICCPR  marks the official view point of the international on the subject of the death penalty.  Article 6 is a clear plea for States that continue to practice the penalty to abolish it outright.  Further to this, Article 6(6) the ICCPR provides for the prohibition of action that would:

“…delay or…prevent the abolition of the capital punishment by any State Party to the present Covenant. ”

With regard to the nature of obligations that must be adhered to by those States that ratify the ICCPR, the single requirement is for the limiting of the death penalty to only the most heinous of crimes .  Interestingly, paragraph 7 of General Comment 6 to the ICCPR also provides exception to the use of the penalty where there is maintenance of due process via trial safeguards, the right to review and the possibility for those condemned to death to seek a pardon or commutation of sentence to that of life imprisonment or less. 

A further obligation was introduced in 1990, which is the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  Rather than setting out to politely ask States to abolish the death penalty and set out limitations for those who do not, the Second Optional Protocol aims to actually abolish the practice altogether.  The preamble of the Protocol is clear on this matter and states that the death penalty:

‘Contributes to enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights.’

The Protocol continues in Article 1 by demanding the cessation of the death penalty and the adoption of all possible measures that would facilitate.  By comparison to the Thirteenth Protocol of the ECHR, the ICCPR continues to allow for the use of the death penalty in times of war:

‘Pursuant to conviction for a most serious crime of a military mature committed during wartime. ’

This reservation does at least have to be notified to the United Nations’ Secretary-General at the commencement and end of any period of war.

1.5.2.2    The Legal Effects of the ICCPR on the UK

In December 1999, the UK ratified the Second Optional Protocol, which means that any re-introduction of the death penalty would result in a direct breach of International Law.  Therefore, in accordance with Article 41(1) of the ICCPR, another signatory State, such as France, would be able to remit a report in accordance with Article 41(1)(a), to the governing body of the ICCPR, which is called the Human Rights Committee .  The report would express grievances as to failure of the UK to ensure that steps are carried out to abolish the death penalty, which are in accordance with the Second Optional Protocol.  If the matter is not resolved, an ad hoc Conciliation Commission will be set up to consider the issue in accordance with Article 42(1)(a) and the results of this will be remitted to the UN within an annual report  who could then see fit to place the matter into their own hands.

1.5.2.3    General Contrast

Despite the precission of vocabulary, the ICCPR is, after all, an optional obligation for UN Member States.  The result of this is that countries that are not entirely against the death penalty simply need not ratify the Second OPTIONAL Protocol. There is however also a political contrast between the written laws of a nation and international treaties, which is that superpowers will do as they please.  This is  demonstrated by the declaration of war on Iraq without the execution of permission via a UN Security Council Resolution.  A further and far earlier example is demonstrated by President Truman’s statement that saw the formal recognition of Israel as an indepentent State by the USA.  This was again a blatant move that vehemently ignored UN protocol .  The result of a history of defiance from the USA and the king making actions of the UK over Iraq only facilitate to weaken the strength of the entire International Law concept and the integrity of the reason for the existence of the UN.  As will be shown in relation to the UK in Part Two, this kind of behavour seriously damages the image of States on the international, political scene.

Part Two    The political effects of the re-introduction of capital punishment

2.1    Internal Politics

    2.1.1    The unwritten constitution, consequences and safeguards

        2.1.1.1    Consequences   

Without a formal Constitution, there is no higher UK law that carries with it a stringent procedure for amendment or repeal and the reason for this is that the UK Government’s political policy is to never bind a future Government .  This therefore means that the Human Rights Act 1998, which has become a vital artery of the unwritten  UK Constitution, could nevertheless be repealed by the conventional passing of a new Act. 

2.1.1.2    Safeguards

There is however the political consideration of convention, which despite being wholly a matter of non-obligatory self-governance , will remain as a virtually solid reassurance of the promise of permanency for the Human Rights Act 1998.  The potential for amendment will therefore only ensue where the purpose will be to enhance as opposed to reduce the protections under it.

2.1.2    The power of the majority viewpoint

However, politics are, by definition, defined by the majority and are always liable to change as the unending cultural journey of social perceptions of right and wrong constantly alter.  In years to come it is highly likely that the current political climate will be known as the era of Human Rights and in the UK this time is at the very of core of reforms that took Human Rights from the unwritten to the written medium.  Milton  argues that the last eight years in which New Labour has maintained the role of Government was a frenzied revolution in the area of public law that is now slowing down.  The highlights of this heightened political activity were no doubt at their utmost peak during the passing of both the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Scotland Act 1998, which saw the re-creation of the Scottish Parliament.  Unfortunately, controversy over the spending habits of the MSPs, as well as the outrageous cost of the pretentious Scottish Parliament  are backlashes that, in their own right, have weakened the integrity of New Labour’s restructured internal political system.  Again Rowe, as a Conservative MP, is eager to press the point that devolution was a publicity stunt and establishes this by pointing out that the Scotland Act 1998 specifies an acutely limited spectrum of independent powers for those MPs who represent constituencies north of the border. 

2.1.3    Predicting the Future of British Human Rights Policies – Are there any         potential impacts for the death penalty?

It is therefore clear that this weakening of public confidence in public law reforms by Labour has abruptly placed constitutional reform onto the back shelf of manifesto policies and we should be in no doubt that a written UK constitution is not going to appear any time soon.  However, whether this means that the Human Rights concept will become a matter of mere later 20th century, early 21st century buzz word is yet to be seen.  The Human condition’s fickle notion of morality will play a huge role for the future of the Human Rights concept but it is imagined that only a political upheaval of monumental proportions would be capable of dislodging it from its indoctrination in law.  In relation to the death penalty, the British stance on this form of punishment has a domestic history that is far older than the British journey through Human Rights.  This therefore means that regardless of the stance that internal politics may take in the future with regard to Human Rights, the continued illegality of a death penalty will no doubt outlive this concept should subsequent regimes deem it obsolete.  Further to this, UK internal and EU policies are matched on this point and the political significance of this is explained below under Part 2.2 2.2    The European Policy – The Relationship with the UK and the political journey of Turkey.

2.2.1    Political Motivations for the UK’s ratification of the 6th and 13th             Protocols of the ECHR – The impact on sovereignty

2.2.1.1    Political Motivations

The UK’s current modest role as a player in European politics, by contrast to its imperial history as the leader of vast colonies, has been weakened by profound opposition to Iraq from other EU Member States.  However, the UK displays clear allegiance to EU political policies by virtue of ratification of the ECHR, but can it be said that such ratification represented any strong move to surrender sovereignty? 

2.2.1.2    The impact of ratification?

It is crucial to contemplate the ratification by Britain to the 6th protocol as late as 1999 by contrast to the execution of the provision by the EU 1983.  Perhaps the reason for this delay was due to the fact that Britain had already abolished the death penalty earlier in 1965 and any subsequent affirmation by ratification to an EU Convention amendment would constitute a mere formality.  This argument fits in extremely well when contemplated with the New Labour Government’s campaign to radically change the face of UK public law with the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998.  Clearly, by signing Protocol 6, the UK was making a positive move to deliberately incorporate it within the provisions of the 1998 Act as well as create a strengthened allegiance with the EU.  It is therefore no surprise that the subsequent ratification of the Thirteenth Protocol took place in 2002 under the same Government with the same pro European policies. 

2.2.2    The further function of the ECHR –  Creating a political entrance test         of allegiance to Human Rights – Turkey’s Ongoing Journey

2.2.2.1    The significance of the Copenhagen Criteria

Part 1.4 gave a brief overview of the legal side of the conditions for entry into the EU.  In addition, the Copenhagen Criteria also sets out slightly more political requirements that are to be satisfied in order to successfully enter the EU.  There are two politically orientated conditions, of which the first is that the candidate for EU membership must have a stable political infrastructure and institutions that guarantee the maintenance of democracy, adherence to the law, human rights and the protection of minority groups within their boarders.  The second is that the country must have a functioning economy with a clear ability to handle the competition that is rife within the EU .

2.2.2.2    The effect of Copenhagen on the ECHR – Considering Turkey

While it is true that the main reason for the Protocol 6 amendment was in order to reflect the growing opposition to the death penalty across the EU  (EEC in 1983) it has developed a further far more crucial role.  As strict doctrine of European law, the ECHR, including Protocols 6 and 13, are Convention provisions to be adopted by future EU Member States as a compulsory condition to their entry into the EU itself.  However, further to this, the EU may intervene prior to Membership status where the applicant State is already a signatory to the ECHR.  In November 1999, the European Court of Human Rights requested that Turkey defer the execution of Mr Öcalan so that the European Court would have the opportunity to examine the merits of Mr Öcalan’s complaints under the ECHR.  This request was granted two months later in January 2000 until the end of ECHR proceedings.  However it was generally felt at the time that this was a tightrope for the Turkish Government who would have been keen to seize the opportunity to demonstrate their intended allegiance to EU law but would have been aware of the political pawn that they had created with this criminal.

2.2.2.3    Turkey’s Current Political Climate – The possibility of positive             influence of legal and political reform for European integration As stated above, Turkey is, in legal terms taking progressive steps in order to fall in line with EU Human Rights policy.  Unfortunately, this move is arguably an interesting insight into reverse legal evolution that could have a devastating effect for Europe.  What is meant by this is that, as illustrated by part 1.1, the history of UK reforms that eventually led to the abolishment of the death penalty were self imposed commitments to a humane criminal justice system, influenced by the changing social and political climate.  By contrast, Turkey is carrying out the legal revolution before there is the requisite political climate in its population that would demand such alterations.  This is made clear by the grizzly fact that English printed news papers in the larger cities such as Istanbul and the Capital, Ankara, reveal that, on average, there are 5000 honour killings each year in Turkey .  The most startling fact is, additionally, that these killings are based not only on defiance of a daughter to marry the man chosen by her family, but this extends also to women seeking an education prior to marriage or independent employment for the purpose of personal sufficiency. The revelation of this contrast between the legal reforms in Turkey and their very Middle Eastern based political and social policy represents a deep concern for the potential futility of the subsequent legal reforms.  With reference to the current task of examining the political effects of re-introducing the death penalty into Britain, this is a clear affirmation of the natural progression of the fact that the political climate creates complimentary law and this does not work vice versa without causing instability.  A clear example of this is also found in Iran where westernisation reforms eventually led to the Iranian Islamic Revolution  and the exile of the Sha of Iran, due to a percentage of the population that was not prepared to adhere to the European lifestyle .

2.2.2.4    Analysis of the delicate operation in Turkey in light of a potential re-introduction of the death penalty in the UK While these deep concerns over the effectiveness of law reform in Turkey are very real, it is unlikely that this will have any immediate negative effects on Turkey’s abolishment of the death penalty and ratification of both the Sixth and Thirteenth Protocols.  This would however change profoundly if a country as influential as the UK were to abandon EU policy and assume a stance of its own on Capital Punishment.  This will be discussed in full in part 2.3.2 in relation to the alterations of international political alliances that would result from re-introduction of the death penalty.

2.3    The alterations of the international political alliances with the UK On May 10, 2001, the Swedish president of the European Union presented to the US administration its policy on the death penalty.   This representation was also, clearly, the stance of the UK in both domestic and European Law.  Therefore, any notions of physical backtracking over an internationally upheld policy would lead to profound alterations of the international political alliances with the UK.  In total Rowe argues that there would be three distinct alterations for the UK in terms of international allegiance.

2.3.1    A Commonwealth Disaster! All of the Commonwealth Countries are strongly against the death penalty and this stance was largely created as a result of political influence that originated in the UK itself!  Any delusions that the UK might have about a commonwealth following over the death penalty would, in addition, be utterly naïve.  As a far more modest country within the political structure of the EU, sudden EU excommunication would have the disastrous effect of leaving the UK out on a limb without the sympathetic security blanket of Commonwealth support, generated either through traditional allegiance or fear.

2.3.2    A Middle Eastern Bond         2.3.2.1    An increased Saudi Arabian Alliance with Turkey While it is obvious that Turkey is not reluctant to adhere to EU policy, Euro sceptics within the country  would no doubt form political alliances with the UK Government and gain strength as a political force that could even lead to reversal of the process to join the EU.  The political result would be a tenuous growth in allegiance between the now non EU Member UK and the powerful Middle East via the bridge of Turkey.  A certain seeing of political eye-to-eye would additionally halt any hope for political climate reform in Turkey.  In essence, the UK could well find a friend in Saudi Arabia but not without a price to pay.  The possibility of execution of trade barriers within Europe would place the UK at the mercy of an alternative alliance that would be greatly heightened by the need for oil although this bargaining chip would not be as powerful as it seems and this is explained below.

2.3.2.2    The American big brother With the USA resources in Texas drying up, the price of oil has increased to unprecedented levels but it is in fact the very mention of the US that would prevent Saudi Arabia from instigating any conditions to pull UK troops out of Iraq in return for supplying oil to the UK.  Saudi Arabia effectively owns seven percent of the USA in terms of direct foreign investment  but this lucrative economic alliance has proved to be no real bargaining chip over Iraq.  Any subsequent UK alliance due to EU exile would no doubt yield the same non-effect on account of the big American brother that would provide the catalyst for quashing any notion of demanding a military withdrawal from Iraq.  Further to this, the USA would, with a price, provide pressure for Europe to withdraw any sanctions placed against the UK

        2.3.2.3    Chinese Indifference There is very little that the Chinese would recognise as highly significant in the re-introduction of the death penalty however, if anything, current barriers to trade into the UK in the form of quotas would no doubt be lifted in order to curb any foreign investment downturns as a result of the re-introduction of the death penalty.  This would be done in order to facilitate freer investment between the two states.

2.4    Resultant weakness of the UK’s participation in international politics

The above bargains that would see the European exiled UK would have severely detrimental effects on the UK’s voice over international Human Rights concerns.  As far as Greenhalgh is concerned it is extremely likely that, if the USA were to abolish its death penalty and join in on the campaign to remove its use from the face of the Earth, virtually all capital punishment endorsing States would follow suit, albeit for economic reasons.

Therefore, in relation to the UK, its part as a major campaigner for Human Rights, especially in the fight against terrorism would be severely damaged and any international representation on the matter would be viewed by other nations as a mere extension of America’s UN contravening campaign.  From now on, the marionette doll of the UK would be regarded as a quasi 51st State, both sheltered and controlled by the US.  A prediction of the results of the effects of this annexation of the UK to the USA are explained below by comparing with the current political alliance.

2.5    A USA/UK Alliance? – Comparing today with a UK that endorses Capital Punishment

2.5.1    The UK and the USA today

In terms of current politics, there are three separate scenarios that illustrate the allied relationship between the UK and the USA.  In the first place there is the UK stance on the Kyoto protocol, which is in stark contrast to that of the USA.  In fact, pressure is being asserted from the UK and other Kyoto adhering countries to persuade the US that they are making a grave error of judgement in maintaining that CO2 emissions are unrelated to the greenhouse effect.

The second scenario, which differs profoundly from that of the former, is of course the campaign in Iraq.  However, it must be established that there were two common aims in this process.  The two countries were politically linked by the oath to combat terror but there was always opposition from virtually the rest of the world due to the fact that, once troops had infiltrated the country, no weapons of mass destruction had been found .  The ‘sexed up’ dossier has, since the outbreak of the war, been dragged through the mud of political opposition and journalistic frenzy.  Despite this, the joint effort campaign continues although with great justification as withdrawal would be to desert a country that needs a military presence as an interim while its own law enforcement, public services and military independence remains juvenile.

The third political stance is of course that of the death penalty, which as explained in the above passages has, in reality, passed the point of no return for the UK.  The British allegiance to a Human Rights form that is in keeping with international treaty and stipulates express prohibition is a stance that leaves the USA more isolated than the effects of their position over Kyoto.

The illustration of these three key political issues is by no means an exhaustive recitation of the most current international political topics that either divide or unite the USA and the UK.  In fact, these three stances reveal that there is no clear cut meeting of minds on the policies of Human Rights between the UK and the USA.  This is ironic given that the war against terror is, in its own right, a campaign in the name of Human Rights.  Instead the political alliance between the UK and the USA forms a strategic link over some issues, which are unaffected by the opposite stances of others.  In simple terms, the effect of a divide between the UK and the USA over the death penalty had no political bearing on the joint effort in Iraq or other more conventional practices of clear political alliance such as trade and tax agreements.

2.5.2    The 51st State?

The above analysis shows that while there must be an upper hand by the USA on the matter of Iraq, there is no current political motivation or pressure for the UK to tighten its allied relationship with the USA by subserviently adhering to its political stances on the death penalty, Kyoto and other moral issues such as the illegality of homosexual acts in the over half of the US States  and the gun culture.

This tactical alliance could have the potential to change but it is highly unlikely that the US would be compelled to force the UK into any policies that it does not agree with.  Instead, the UK would, as it does now, be utterly powerless to influence the US on the matter of gun culture law and draconian stances on morality.  The one any only yet profound difference would be that the USA, as a political protector of the UK could create a one sided economic alliance that would force the UK to provide extortionately advantageous tax incentives for trade and investment, as well as VAT redemption policies for US corporations and even tourists that would carry no minimum purchase levels.  Further to this, the UK would lose its current role as somewhat of a king maker in that no positive British input over the US into the EU political arena would ever be possible.

The analytical scope of this piece has proved to be a profound insight into the changing face of domestic, European and global politics as a result of the legal move to re-introduce the death penalty in the UK.  There are in fact five clear summations that have arisen as a result of this research.  To begin with, the law of the UK has steadily verged, over a period of nearly two hundred years, from the draconian and barbaric macabre of publicly accessible slow deaths, to the full abolishment of the death penalty in both war and peacetime, as both a European and domestic commitment.  The result of this is therefore a clear unlikelihood of backtracking over political evolution without the catalyst of profound political revolution.  Secondly, the UK is now inescapably, legally intertwined with the EU on this matter as a direct result of ratification of both the Sixth and Thirteenth Protocols to the ECHR.  This is revealed with the realisation of profound potential consequences for a UK re-introduction of the death penalty, which is, of course, the requirement to physically pull out of the lifeblood of UK politics, namely, the EU!

The third summation relates to the comparison of the US, EU and International Law on the subject of the death penalty.  In the US the markedly imprecise vocabulary of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments is, in effect a tool that facilitates breach of the policy of the separation of powers.  In other words, wide constitutional provisions provide judicial discretion to create verbal niceties that facilitate to justify the clear reverse judgement that took place for the case of Gregg v Georgia .  This is in stark contrast to the clear cut stance of both EU and International Law and further illustrates that, in order to re-introduce the death penalty into the UK actual renouncement of ratification of domestic, EU and International Law is required as opposed to a mere favourable judicial interpretation of the law.

The fourth summation is that both the legal and political effects of re-introduction of capital punishment into the UK would be detrimental to the efforts of EU expansion and would ridicule the Copenhagen Criteria.  The result would be a second international alliance option for struggling states such as Turkey to join hands with the now exiled UK.

Finally, the international political arena would profoundly change for the UK whereby Commonwealth comradeship would become a distance memory and stronger ties between the UK and the Middle East would arise under the protective and controlling umbrella of the USA.  The most profound effect would be a deaf ear syndrome on all other major States across the world if the UK were to announce a stance on any international political issue such as Kyoto, terrorism and Human Rights.  An equally profound hypothesis is the image of pressure from the US to create extremely favourable foreign direct investment privileges for UK investors into the UK. 

Overall the direct result of this analysis is that the future of UK criminal justice policy as being anti-capital punishment is completely safe and any reversal of this stance cannot and never will happen.

Bibliography

Legislation.

• 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights G.A. res. 44/128, annex, 44 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49) at 207, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989), entered into force July 11, 1991
• European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
• Copenhagen Criteria, [Available Online] At: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/intro/criteria.htm
• Human Rights Act 1998
• Scotland Act 1998
• Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1861
• Capital Punishment within Prisons Act 1868
• Forfeiture Act of 1870
• P & S v Cornwall County Council Case C-441/93 [1996] ECR I-2143
• Grant v Southwest Trains Ltd Case C-249/96 [1997] ECR I-621
• Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 248 (1949)
• Furman v Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972)
• Gregg v Georgia 428 U.S. 153 (1976)
• Ring v. Arizona. 536 US 584 (2002).

Government Publications

• Regular Progress Report (Turkey), 8 Nov 2000, [Available Online] At: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_2000/pdf/rr_tr_2000_en.pdf
• Regular Progress Report (Turkey), October 10, 2004, [Available Online] At: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_2004/pdf/rr_tr_2004_en.pdf

Text Book Publications

• Farrington, K, August 1 2000, History of Punishment and Torture, a Journey through the dark side of justice, Hamlyn Press
• Kerrigan, M, 2001, The Instruments of Torture, Lyons Press
• Drewry, G & Blake, 1999, Law and the Spirit of Inquiry: Essays in Honour of Sir Louis Bloom Cooper, Kluwer Law International
• Potter, H, 1993, Hanging in Judgement: Religion and the Death Penalty in England, London: SCM Press
• Butler, D, 1986, British political facts, 1900-1985. 6th ed. London: Macmillan Press
• Rawlings, P, 24 February, 1999, Crime and Power: Origins and Development of Criminal Justice Policy 1700-1997 Longman Criminology Series
• Bradley, A.W and Ewing, K.D, 2002, Constitutional and Administrative Law, 13th edition, Longman Press, Part I.4.
• Afary, J. and Anderson, K.B. 2005, Foucoult and the Iranian Revolution, Gender and the Seduction of Islamism, University of Chicago Press
• Bellesiles, M, 2000, Arming America: The Origins of the a National Gun Culture, Alfred A Knopf
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• Crown Prosecution Service, 10 June, 2002, Court of Appeal upholds Hanratty’s conviction, [Available Online] At: http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/archive/120_02.html
• Miscarriages of Justice, Timothy Evans, [Available Online] At: http://innocent.org.uk/cases/timothyevans/timothyevans.pdf
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• American Bar Association, 2003, Guidelines fort he Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, 31 HOFSTRA Law Review 903
• Baldus, D et al, 1998, Reflections on the inevitability of racial discrimination in capital sentencing and the impossibility of its prevention, detection, and correction, 51 Washington and Lee
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• Leahy, P, 2001, The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, HOFSTRA Law Review, Vol 29:1113 at p 1113
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• Rothenberg, L, E, 2004, International Law, US Sovereignty and the Death Penalty, Georgetown Journal of International Law, [Available Online] At: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4140/is_200404/ai_n9472187/pg_2
• Scottish Parliament News Release, 20 June 2001, The Scottish Parliament Building, R/N 01/64, [Availabel Online] At: www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/ research/pdf_res_notes/rn01-64.pdf
• Safak, Y, September 6, 2005, Guess who’s coming to dinner? The New Anatolian, [Available Online] At:   http://www.yenisafak.com.tr/arsiv/2005/eylul/06/fkoru2.html
• BBC News World Edition, 24 September, 2003, N WMD in Iraq, Source Claims, [Available Online] At: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3135932.stm
• Rebecca Greenhalgh, Amicus Charity.  Interview held on Monday 14 November, 2005, At Middle Temple
• Ann Milton, Conservative MP for Guildford, Email response to questioning, Friday 11 November, 2005

Web Resources

• Harry Truman Library: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/israel/large/israel.htm
• Turkish News Online: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/ 
• Death Penalty Information http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=28&did=538
• Kyoto USA http://www.kyotousa.org/
• Sodomy Laws USA http://www.sodomylaws.org/research.htm
• Moore, M, 2004, Fahrenheit 911, Working Title Production.

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March 19, 2024

Evidence Does Not Support the Use of the Death Penalty

Capital punishment must come to an end. It does not deter crime, is not humane and has no moral or medical basis

By The Editors

A death penalty vigil, held in 2021 outside an Indiana penitentiary.

Bryan Woolston/Reuters/Redux

It is long past time to abolish the death penalty in the U.S.

Capital punishment was halted in the U.S. in 1972 but reinstated in 1976, and since then, nearly 1,600 people have been executed. To whose gain? Study after study shows that the death penalty does not deter crime, puts innocent people to death , is racially biased , and is cruel and inhumane. It is state-sanctioned homicide, wholly ineffective, often botched, and a much more expensive punishment than life imprisonment. There is no ethical, scientifically supported, medically acceptable or morally justifiable way to carry it out.

The recent execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith demonstrates this barbarity. After a failed attempt at lethal injection by prison officials seemingly inexperienced in the placement of an IV, the state of Alabama killed Smith in January using nitrogen gas . The Alabama attorney general claimed that this method of execution was fast and humane , despite no supporting evidence. Eyewitnesses recounted that Smith thrashed during the nitrogen administration and took more than 20 minutes to die.

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Opposition to the death penalty is growing among the American public , and the Biden administration must follow through on its promise to end this horror. The Department of Justice must heed its own admission that the death penalty doesn’t stop crime, and our legislators must continue to take up the issue on the congressional floor. The few states that still condemn people to death must follow the lead of states that have considered the evidence and rejected capital punishment.

Programs such as the Innocence Project have shown, over and over, that innocent people have been sentenced to death. Since 1973 nearly 200 people on death row have been exonerated, based on appeals, the reopening of cases, and the entrance of new and sometimes previously suppressed evidence. People have recanted testimony, and supposedly airtight cases have been poked full of evidentiary holes.

Through the death penalty, the criminal justice system has killed at least 20 people now believed to have been innocent and uncounted others whose cases have not been reexamined . Too many of these victims have been Black or Hispanic. This is not justice. These are state-sanctioned hate crimes.

Using rigorous statistical and experimental control methods, both economics and criminal justice studies have consistently found that there is no evidence for deterrence of violent crimes in states that allow capital punishment. One such study, a 2009 paper by criminology researchers at the University of Dallas, outlines experimental and statistical flaws in econometrics-based death penalty studies that claim to find a correlated reduction in violent crime. The death penalty does not stop people from killing. Executions don’t make us safer.

The methods used to kill prisoners are inhumane. Electrocution fails , causing significant pain and suffering. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist who criticizes the use of medicines in carrying out the death penalty, has found (at the request of lawyers of death row inmates) that the lungs of prisoners who were killed by lethal injection were often heavy with fluid and froth that suggested they were struggling to breathe and felt like they were drowning. Nitrogen gas is used in some veterinary euthanasia, but based in part on the behavior of rats in its presence, it is “unacceptable” for mammals , according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. This means that Smith, as his lawyers claimed in efforts to stop his execution, became a human subject in an immoral experiment.

Courts have often decided, against the abundant evidence, that these killings are constitutional and do not fall under the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the 8th Amendment or, in Smith’s appeal , both the 8th Amendment and the due process protection clause of the 14th amendment.

A small number of prosecutors and judges in a few states, mostly in the South, are responsible for most of the death sentences being handed down in the U.S. today. It’s a power they should not be able to wield. Smith was sentenced to life in prison by a jury before the judge in his case overruled the jury and gave him the death sentence.

A furious urge for vengeance against those who have done wrong—or those we think have done wrong—is the biggest motivation for the death penalty. But this desire for violent retribution is the very impulse that our criminal justice system is made to check, not abet. Elected officials need to reform this aspect of our justice system at both the state and federal levels. Capital punishment does not stop crime and mocks both justice and humanity. The death penalty in the U.S. must come to an end.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American .

Moscow attack suspects appear severely beaten as they're charged in Russian court

Four suspects accused of killing more than 130 people in a terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall appeared heavily beaten as they were charged by a court in the Russian capital Sunday.

Photos and videos released by the court showed the four men being led into the courtroom with various levels of injuries. Three of the men had visible bruises and swelling on their faces, including one with heavy bandaging around his right ear. The fourth seemed barely conscious as he sat inside the prisoner’s box dressed in a hospital gown and on a stretcher, with his eyes closed for most of the hearing.

It came after images showing the suspects’ violent treatment in custody were shared widely across Russian social media, and as President Vladimir Putin vowed revenge but made no mention of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

The Basmanny District Court of Moscow named the suspects as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Mukhammadsobir Faizov. Two of the four had admitted their guilt, the court said, although their condition raised questions about whether they were able to speak freely.

All four were charged with committing a terror act, according to the court, and could face up to life imprisonment. The suspects were ordered detained until May 22 by the court. Seven more people were detained on suspicion of involvement in the attack.

All four are citizens of ex-Soviet state Tajikistan, Tass state news agency reported. The suspects had to use a translator to communicate in court, according to Tass.

NBC News analyzed footage shared over the weekend by Russian pro-war Telegram channels that showed at least one of the suspects being tortured, and others violently interrogated and injured. NBC News was able to authenticate the footage by comparing it with images of the suspects as they appeared in court on Sunday.

In one video, suspect Saidakrami Rachabalizoda lies on the ground in the woods while a man hacks at Rachabalizoda’s ear with a knife, before stuffing what looks like part of the ear into Rachabalizoda’s own mouth. Videos also show suspect Shamsidin Fariduni being interrogated on the ground in the woods as a man holds Fariduni’s head up by his hair. In a subsequent image, Fariduni drools on the floor of a sports hall with his pants and underwear around his knees while a man stands on his leg, a black box at his side.

The men are accused of perpetrating the worst terror attack Russia has seen in the last 20 years, killing at least 137 people and leaving dozens injured. Videos from inside the Crocus City Hall on Friday night showed several armed and camouflaged men shooting at people inside the venue, seemingly at random. The venue also caught on fire after an alleged explosion, leading the roof to cave in.

The detention hearing for the four suspects came as Russia marked a national day of mourning Sunday, and people continued to bring flowers to the burned-out site of the attack.

Putin claimed Ukraine’s involvement in preparing an escape route for the suspects before they were captured, an accusation Kyiv has vehemently denied and said was being used to distract from his own security failings and raise support for intensifying his military campaign .

In a sign of the febrile mood among Russian officials and beyond, a leading Kremlin propagandist offered an approving nod to the signs of torture and others called for the perpetrators to face the most severe punishment, with some even reviving calls to bring back the death penalty.

“I never expected this from myself, but when I see how they are brought into the court crooked, and even this ear, I feel extremely satisfied,” the head of the Russian state broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan, said on Telegram, next to the images of the four suspects from the court.

Meanwhile, former president and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called Monday for the perpetrators and everyone involved in facilitating the attack to be killed. “Who paid, who sympathized, who helped. Kill them all,” he said in a post on Telegram.

Putin himself indicated in his address to the nation Saturday, nearly a day after the attack, that there would be no mercy for those behind what he called the “bloody massacre.”

“Terrorists, murderers, non-humans who do not and cannot have a nationality face one unenviable fate — retribution and oblivion,” said Putin, who less than a week ago was jubilantly celebrating his choreographed landslide election win .

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment Monday when asked about the signs of violence on the suspects’ faces during their court appearance and the videos of alleged torture circulating online.

The Russian defense ministry said Monday that border servicemen who helped detain the four suspects in the Bryansk region, near the borders with both Ukraine and Belarus, received state awards for their bravery. 

Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.

Larissa Gao is a fellow on NBC’s Asia Desk, based in Hong Kong.

Caroline Radnofsky is a supervising reporter for NBC News' Social Newsgathering team based in London.