What is Capital Punishment?
Capital punishment or the death penalty is a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime.
How is it carried out?
Past methods
Current Methods
Civil Deaths
- Blowing from a gun
- Boiling
- Breaking wheel
- Burning
- Crucifixion
- Crushing
- Disembowelment
- Dismemberment
- Drawing and quartering
- Elephant
- Flaying
- Immurement
- Impalement
- Premature burial
- Sawing
- Scaphism
- Slow slicing
- Suffocation in ash
Current Methods
- Decapitation
- Electrocution
- Gas chamber
- Hanging
- Lethal injection
- Shooting (firing squad)
- Stoning
- Nitrogen asphyxiation (proposed)
Civil Deaths
Which countries carry out Capital Punishment?
Which countries used to carry out Capital Punishment?
Controversy & Debate
- Human Rights
"An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
In the classic doctrine of natural rights as expounded by for instance Locke and Blackstone, on the other hand, it is an important idea that the right to life can be forfeited.
- Wrongful execution
Some have claimed that as many as 39 executions have been carried out in the face of compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt from in the US from 1992 through 2004. Newly available DNA evidence prevented the pending execution of more than 15 death row inmates during the same period in the US, but DNA evidence is only available in a fraction of capital cases. However, since the death penalty reinstatement in the United States during the 1970s, no inmate executed has been granted posthumous pardon.
Also improper procedure may result in unfair executions. For example, Amnesty International argues that in Singapore "the Misuse of Drugs Act contains a series of presumptions which shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the accused. This conflicts with the universally guaranteed right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty". This refers to a situation when someone is being caught with drugs. In this situation, in almost any jurisdiction, the prosecution has a prima facie case.
- Retribution
Abolitionists argue that retribution is simply revenge and cannot be condoned. Others while accepting retribution as an element of criminal justice nonetheless argue that life without parole is a sufficient substitute.
- International views
Again in 2008, a large majority of states from all regions adopted a second resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in the UN General Assembly (Third Committee) on 20 November. 105 countries voted in favour of the draft resolution, 48 voted against and 31 abstained.
A range of amendments proposed by a small minority of pro-death penalty countries were overwhelmingly defeated. It had in 2007 passed a non-binding resolution (by 104 to 54, with 29 abstentions) by asking its member states for "a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty".
A number of regional conventions prohibit the death penalty, most notably, the Sixth Protocol (abolition in time of peace) and the 13th Protocol (abolition in all circumstances) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The same is also stated under the Second Protocol in the American Convention on Human Rights, which, however has not been ratified by all countries in the Americas, most notably Canada and the United States. Most relevant operative international treaties do not require its prohibition for cases of serious crime, most notably, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This instead has, in common with several other treaties, an optional protocol prohibiting capital punishment and promoting its wider abolition.
Several international organizations have made the abolition of the death penalty (during time of peace) a requirement of membership, most notably the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe. The EU and the Council of Europe are willing to accept a moratorium as an interim measure. Thus, while Russia is a member of the Council of Europe, and practises the death penalty in law, it has not made public use of it since becoming a member of the Council.
Other states, while having abolished de jure the death penalty in time of peace and de facto in all circumstances, have not ratified Protocol no.13 yet and therefore have no international obligation to refrain from using the death penalty in time of war or imminent threat of war (Armenia, Latvia, Poland and Spain). Italy is the most recent to ratify it, on 3 March 2009.
Turkey has recently, as a move towards EU membership, undergone a reform of its legal system. Previously there was a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in Turkey as the last execution took place in 1984. The death penalty was removed from peacetime law in August 2002, and in May 2004 Turkey amended its constitution in order to remove capital punishment in all circumstances. It ratified Protocol no. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights in February 2006. As a result, Europe is a continent free of the death penalty in practice, all states but Russia, which has entered a moratorium, having ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, with the sole exception of Belarus, which is not a member of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been lobbying for Council of Europe observer states who practise the death penalty, the U.S. and Japan, to abolish it or lose their observer status. In addition to banning capital punishment for EU member states, the EU has also banned detainee transfers in cases where the receiving party may seek the death penalty.New Zealand, South Africa, and most European nations except Belarus.
Among non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are noted for their opposition to capital punishment. A number of such NGOs, as well as trade unions, local councils and bar associations formed a World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2002.
Religious Views
The world's major religions have mixed opinions on the death penalty, depending on the sect, the individual believer, and the time period.
1. Roman Catholic ChurchSt. Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church, accepts the death penalty as a deterrent and prevention method but not as a means of vengeance.
2. Protestant
The Religious Society of Friends or Quaker Church is one of the earliest American opponents of capital punishment and unequivocally opposes execution in all its forms.
3. Mormonism
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also called Mormons) neither promotes nor opposes capital punishment, although the church's founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., supported it. However, today the church officially state it is a "matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law."
- Buddhism
- Christianity
1. Roman Catholic ChurchSt. Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church, accepts the death penalty as a deterrent and prevention method but not as a means of vengeance.
2. Protestant
The Religious Society of Friends or Quaker Church is one of the earliest American opponents of capital punishment and unequivocally opposes execution in all its forms.
3. Mormonism
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also called Mormons) neither promotes nor opposes capital punishment, although the church's founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., supported it. However, today the church officially state it is a "matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law."
- Hinduism
- Islam
- Judaism