Ancient History

The earliest known form of written law is that of The Code of Hammurabi, which is a well-preserved Babylonian code of law in ancient Iraq. It dates back to roughly 1772 BC, when the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi enacted a total of 282 laws for his people to follow. Accompanied by each law was the individual punishment that would be served if the law was broken. Many punishments were lex talionis (an eye for an eye), which also included one of the earliest forms of the death penalty.

Ex. Law #196. "If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. If one break a man's bone, they shall break his bone. If one destroy the eye of a freeman or break the bone of a freeman he shall pay one mana of silver. If one destroy the eye of a man's slave or break a bone of a man's slave he shall pay one-half his price."

Examples of crimes which were worthy of death are as follows:

Ex. Law #15: "If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death.”

 Ex. Law #22: "If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death."

In ancient history, the vast majority of cultures used Capital punishment as a way of punishing those who rebel, and deterring others away from crime. The Romans were renowned for executing their prisoners for a vast array of reasons, as did the ancient Greeks. In 621 BC, the death penalty was applied for the majority of crimes in Greece, and even when new laws were published, the original homicide statutes remained.

In China, the death penalty was not in mainstream use until 759, and even then it was used scarcely compared to other countries. There were 24 executions is 730, and 58 six years later in 736. The preferred methods of execution in China were strangulation and decapitation, the latter being reserved for more serious crimes, such as treason. The ancient Chinese believed that it was disrespectful to one's ancestors to return send a body to the grave dismembered, which is why strangulation was the preferred method. However, those who committed heinous crimes were not afforded this sign of respect.

The Bible

The death penalty plays a large role within the Bible, and the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament.) The Torah, also known as the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Christian Old Testament) also condones the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, violation of the Sabbath, sexual crimes, blasphemy and magic.

Biblical examples:

Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

Exodus 21:12: “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall by put to death.”

Exodus 21:15: “Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death.”

Exodus 21:16: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.”

Exodus 21:17: “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.”

Leviticus 20:27: “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall by stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.”

Deuteronomy 24:16: “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”

Medieval and Early Modern Periods

In the middle ages and early modern Europe, the death penalty was used as the main form of punishment. During the reign of Henry VIII, an estimation of up to 72,000 people were executed under his orders, and this was not a rare occurrence in during this era. In Wallachia in the 15^th century, Vlad III was busy conducting his own penalty system, in by which most crimes resulted in the slow death by impalement. He was feared amongst his peers and rivals, not to mention his citizens.

 It was between the 15^th and 18^th centuries that the witch trials spread across Europe, then to North America. Widespread fear of Satanic witches captivated the Christian societies, threatening to undermine their beliefs and principles. As a result, tens of thousands of women were prosecuted and executed.

United States of america - death penalty

When the European settlers came to America, they brought with them their laws and punishment system, including the death penalty. According to reports, the first execution to take part on American soil was in 1608 in the British North American colonies. The Jamestown colony executed Captain George Kendall via a firing squad for being a suspected spy for the Spanish government. Several years on, between 1611 and 1612, Virginia Governor Thomas Dale introduced the first code of laws entitled 'Articles, Lawes, and Orders Divine, Politique, and Martiall' (also known as Dale's Code.) This code was rather similar to Britain's 'Bloody code', in that many minor offences such as petty theft and pickpocketing were punishable by death. It promoted an ruling authoritarian system for the Colony of Virginia, establishing  a single ruling group that was able to “hold tight control of the colony.”

The largest execution in the history of the United States was held for 38 Dakota people who were convicted of murder and rape during the Dakota War of 1862. On 26^th December 1862 in Minnesota, all 38 prisoners were placed on a four sided platform. With a single blow from an axe to a piece of rope, the platform gave way, hanging 37 of the condemned. The final convicts rope had broken and had to be re-hanged shortly afterwards.

Individual states

Each colony had their own ideas of punishment, as do the states do today. Whilst some colonies chose to use the death penalty, others saw it in a very dim light, wanting very little to do with its use. Michigan was the first state to abolish executions shortly after entering the United States union, and despite many attempts over the years to change this, the death penalty has remained abolished to this day.

Many other states have a long history of opposing the death penalty, including:

Wisconsin

Rode Island

Maine

North Dakota

Minnesota

West Virginia

Iowa

Vermont

Those states who were in favour of the death penalty held their executions in the public domain. Up to ten thousand eager viewers would stand in the streets to view the hangings, buying souvenirs of the joyous occasion. This carnival type of atmosphere became common with public executions all over the world, turning punishments and death into a public party. People would buy alcohol, and drink in merriment as their entertainment began, pushing their way to the front of the crowd to get the best viewpoint. Fights broke out amongst the crowd regularly, as everyone there wanted the best spot to see the hanging. The intellectual elite of the times claimed the executions to be a cruel and unusual punishment, and as the 19^th century came about, this way of thinking was becoming more widespread.

Nineteenth Century

The beginning of the 19^th century saw a shift in the perception of the death penalty in many states, particularly in the north east. States began by reducing the number of capital crimes, lessening the punishments for many crimes. As an alternative solution to executions, state penitentiaries were built to house and confine convicts, punishing them with lack of liberty, as opposed to physical pain. In 1834,  Pennsylvania was the first state to announce that all remaining executions were now to occur inside the prisons, paving the way for others to follow. In 1838, several states removed the mandatory death sentence in place of a discretionary death sentence, meaning that the courts would decide the punishment they deemed relevant to the crime.

This wave of reformation swept across the country, and by 1849, a total of 15 states had banned public executions and were holding private hangings. In 1846, Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes bar treason, followed by Rhode Island in 1852. That same year, Massachusetts limited its executions to  first-degree murder, classifying the different motives for murder. The following year, Wisconsin abolished the death penalty after an execution went horribly wrong. The rope used was too short, and the convicts neck was not instantly snapped as it should have, but rather he was left struggling at the end of the rope, taking a full 20 minutes to die.

Despite many states opposing the death penalty, there were still many states which were strongly in favour of it. Many states increased the crimes deemed as capital punishment, especially when they were committed by slaves.  During the Civil War, the death penalty debates no longer became a priority, as attention was being drawn to the anti-slavery movement instead. The first electric chair was introduced in1890, when William Kemmler was executing using the device, and this form of execution in the US rapidly began to replace the gallows.

Twentieth Century

The turn of the century brought about a new lease of life for the reformation movement, and by 1917, another six states had completely outlawed the use of the death penalty. However, this reform was short-lived. The US had just entered World War I, and class conflicts arose between the socialists and capitalism, causing a very uncertain atmosphere. In addition to this, fears were mounting of a revolution occurring in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. As a result, five of the six states who abolished the death penalty had it reinstated again by 1920.

During the 1920s, the state of Nevada pledged to find a more humane way of performing their executions, and introduced cyanide gas in 1924. The first convict to be killed by cyanide was named Gee Jon. Cyanide gas was pumped into his cell whilst he slept, but did not work, due to the gas escaping. A temporary chamber was constructed in the butchers of Nevada State prison,which contained a wooden chair and a small window beside it, for the witnesses to see inside. On 8^th February 1924, Gee Jon wept as he was strapped into the chair, and was told to “Brace up!” by one of the surrounding officers. At 9.40am, four pounds of hydro-cyanic acid was pumped into the chamber, forcing Jon to loose consciousness after around five minutes of inhalation. The chamber had to be aired out, and so Jon's body was left in the chamber until 12.20pm, when he was taken to the prison hospital. No autopsy was carried out on the body, for fear that some of the gas would leak out of him, poisoning everyone in the area.

The early 1930's saw the beginning of the Great Depression, and with it came along the highest execution rates in US history. On average, 167 people per year were being executed by the state, and this continued on into the 1940s, when 1,289 executions took place. It was the 1950s when the public opinion of the death penalty began to change, as they could see that many of their allies across the world had either abolished or limited their death penalty usage. The number of executions dropped dramatically, showing a figure of 715 throughout the entire 1950s, and only 191 in the 60s-70s.

Suspension of the death penalty

During the 1960s there were fundamental changes in the use of the death penalty. Previously, the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments were viewed as being in favour of the death penalty. However, it was suggested that the death penalty was a cruel and unusual punishment, making it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Previously, in 1958 in the Trop V Dulles case (356 U.S. 86), the Supreme Court ruled that it would be a cruel and unusual punishment to revoke a US Citizenship of a U.S citizen. They declared that the Eighth Amendment contained an "evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society." Although this was not a death penalty case, the  abolitionists applied the logic to executions, maintaining that the people of the US had evolved beyond barbaric punishments.

There were several further cases which brought the death penalty into question, but none so strong as the landmark cases of Furman v. Georgia, Jackson v. Georgia, and Branch v. Texas (known collectively as the Furman v. Georgia case. (408 U.S. 238))

The issue of arbitrariness had already been under some debate within the Supreme Court. In 1972, Furman argued that capital cases were usually dealt with in a capricious manner, leading to arbitrary sentencing. The court agreed with Furman, in that many sentences were based upon personal whims, therefore setting a standard of a 'cruel and unusual punishment.' Viewed as a direct violation of the Eight Amendment, the Supreme Court voided 40 death penalty statutes, and commuted 629 death sentences to imprisonment around the country.

Reinstated Death Penalty

Capital punishment was therefore suspended from 1972, but it did not last long. The American public and media were outraged at the decision to revoke the death penalty. The general consensus of the Furman case was that the problems with the death penalty arose due to specific statutes, and not the punishment itself. The court essentially agreed, and gave all US states the opportunity to either keep the ban on the death penalty or to rewrite their statutes.

A total of 35 states attempted to address the court's concerns and enacted a new set of death penalty statutes, including mandatory death sentences for certain forms of murder. By enforcing such mandatory sentences, arbitrary decision-making could be eliminated without the need for suspending the death penalty. The first state to rewrite its statutes was Florida, who did this just five months after the Supreme Court's ruling.

Alongside mandatory sentencing, other states provided guidelines for the judge and jury to follow in capital punishment cases. Such guidelines gave way for mitigating circumstances and aggravation, which added the option of a more lenient sentence, as opposed to the death penalty. These guidelines were approved by the Supreme Court in the Gregg v. Georgia (428U.S.153) case, along side the Jurek v. Texas (428 U.S. 262) and Profit v. Florida (428 U.S. 242) cases – more commonly known as the Gregg decision. The approval of the guidelines demonstrated a constitutional set of death penalty statues, and thus the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in those states and also declared that the sentence was a constitutional punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Restrictions

The Supreme Court has placed two restrictions on the use of the death penalty since the turn of the millennium.

The first was due to the results of the Atkins v. Virginia (536 U.S. 304) case. It was ruled that the execution of mentally retarded convicts would be a cruel and unusual punishment. To do so would be  a direct breach of the Eighth Amendment, so as a result, executing anyone with an IQ below 70 became outlawed.

The second restriction came about during the Roper v. Simmons (543 U.S. 551) case in 2005, when it was decided that prisoners under the age of 18 at the time of the crime could not be executed. As with the first restriction, it was deemed that executing prisoners who were juveniles at the time they committed the crime was a cruel and unusual punishment, in contradiction with the Eighth Amendment

The Espy File

The Espy File is a database containing all executions held in the US and the colonies from 1608 to 2002. It was created by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla and distributed across the inter-university consortium for political and social research.

Reports claim that the Espy File is incomplete, and that many executions are known of but are not present on the list. Despite this, the Espy File is the most complete list of U.S executions available, demonstrating the long history of American executions.

united kingdom

The death penalty has been an instrumental aspect to British culture for centuries. During the middle ages, people were boiled alive, burned at the stake and hung, draw and quartered.

Boiling – Henry VIII passed statute 22 which made boiling a legal form of the death penalty. It was first enacted to punish a man named Richard Rice, who poisoned many people and killed two. A chronicle at the time reported: "He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work."

Burned at the stake – Examples of such executions were found as far back as the 16^th and 17^th centuries for the crime of heresy. Mary I brought the stake into mainstream use during her reign, burning hundreds of religious heretics alive. Death by burning was eventually abolished by King Charles II in 1676.  There were two main ways in which people died at the stake.

The first was when numerous people were executed at the same time, and the large fire would poison the convicts with carbon monoxide. When this happened, the prisoners would pass out and die, long before any substantial burning to the body occurred. However, when a person was burned at the stake alone, the fire was too small to induce enough carbon monoxide to make the prisoner loose consciousness. The person would then slowly burn until death occurred from either heatstroke, shock, the loss of blood, or the thermal decomposition of vital body organs.

Hanged, drawn and quartered – Records indicate that this execution method began during the reign of King Henry III in the 13^th century for people convicted of high treason. It became an official penalty in England years later in 1851 for men convicted of high treason. Women who were found guilty of this crime were not subject to being hanged, drawn and quartered, but burned alive at the stake instead.

The convicts were strapped to a wooden panel and drawn by horses to their place of execution. They were then hanged until they were close to death, when they would be emasculated, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. The body pieces were then often placed on display in popular places, such as the London Bridge as a warning to others contemplating high treason.

The Bloody Code

The Bloody Code was a system of laws and punishments in England between 1688 and 1815. It was given the name retrospectively, due to the high number of executions that were carried out during its time. When the code was first brought into practice in 1688, there were a total of 50 crimes on the statute book which were punishable by death. By then end of the 18^th century, that number had risen to 220 offences.

The vast majority of the laws of the Bloody code surrounded on the defence of property, which predominantly protected the higher classes of aristocrats and members of the gentry. Whilst the social elite claimed that the higher classes were subject to the same laws and punishments as everyone else, the records show a very different story. Over 99% of the executions which were carried out under the Bloody Code were the poorest members of society, and therefore the lowest classes.

During the trail of the accused, they would be faced by a jury drawn up from people from the local community. As the majority of guilty verdicts ended in execution, even for petty crimes, the members of the jury were sympathetic to those standing trial. As most of the cases revolved around property, the jury would refuse to value the property at its full value. By diminishing the value of the property, they were reducing the seriousness of the crime, often saving lives.

To ensure the death penalty served as a deterrent to crime, all executions were carried out in the public eye. Public executions played a large role in English society. Large crowds would gather outside the prison walls and rejoice in merriment at the occasion. This was not the expected reaction, as the executions were meant to send a moral message or prevailing justice, not turn into a carnival atmosphere. Crowds would cheer at the condemned, taunting them as they faced their deaths. The death penalty was supported by the vast majority of the country, including the influential newspapers, the public, and the Church of England.

Victorian Era

The intellectual elite strongly opposed of the death penalty as a whole, claiming it to be a barbaric punishment in which the public revelled. Gradually, as the Victorian era emerged, a new age of reformation swept over the country. A new classification system was created, designed to punish criminals according to the seriousness of their crime, as opposed to treating them all with the same severity. In 1823, the Judgement of Death Act 1823 was brought in to action, abolishing the death penalty for crimes which were not deemed as capital offences.

As the threat of death was removed for many crimes, the crime rate in England scored during the 19^th century. As rape was no longer a capital offence, the conviction rate rose from 5% to 18%. Not only was the treat of death removed for the rapists, but the jury itself was more likely to convict, now knowing they were not sending people to their deaths. In addition to this, the industrial revolution brought in a serge of immigrants, to London in particular, resulting in cramped conditions amongst the poor. The fear of crime was rampant though out society, but without the death penalty, and the ending of transportation, the need for prisons began clear.

The Victorians expanded their jails into prisons during the 1840s, with the notion of both punishment and reform. During this time, the death penalty was still in use, and executions were still being held in the public eye. Writers such as Charles Dickens spoke openly about his disagreement, particularity about what type of people the executions draw in:

“The spectators include two large classes of thieves—one class who go there as they would go to a dog-fight, or any other brutal sport, for the attraction and excitement of the spectacle; the other who make it a dry matter of business, and mix with the crowd, solely to pick pockets. Add to these, the dissolute, the drunken, the most idle, profligate, and abandoned of both sexes—some moody ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither by a fearful interest—and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the greater part are of an age and temperament rendering the gratification of that curiosity highly dangerous to themselves and to society—and the great elements of the concourse are stated.”

Eventually, it was realised that executions could be carried out inside prisons, instead of outside. In 1868, the last public execution took place on an Irish republican, Michael Barrett. As he was hanged, the merry crowd sang the song 'Champagne Charlie' by Alfred Lee and George Leybourne.

Gallows in Prisons

When the gallows were taken into prisons, the state demanded order and structure to the process. The executions themselves would be carried out by professional hangmen, who had new limits placed on the amount of alcohol they could drink the night before. They were also ordered to stay in the prison overnight, to ensure they kept to their alcoholic limits. Structure was also brought to the actual method of execution. Whilst hanging remained the preferred method, specific measurements were carried out, to ensure the hanging went as smoothly and quickly as possible.

This meant that the slow strangulation over 30minutes was no longer appropriate, and studies carried out showed that this happened because the rope was too short. It was also discovered that if the rope was too long, the convict would be decapitated; the rope had to be just the right length, according to the criminal's weight and height. The specific figures were used as a standard in England, and managed to silence the death penalty critics for decades. They deemed the death penalty a quiet, moral affair in which no one rejoiced in or danced about. Both sides of the argument had won, for the time being.

Nazi War Criminals

Executions in prison carried on in Britain through the first half of the 20^th century without much change or opposition, until the end of Word War II. The Nuremberg War Crime Trials were held between 1945 to 1949. Those deemed to be major war criminals were tried first, ending in October 1946. Those which were held after this were for the 'less important' war criminals, which ended in 1949.

The first trials at Nuremberg were specified for a total of 24 senior Nazi members, including Hermann Göering, Kaltenbrunner, Ernst and Baldur von Schirach. The public, the media and even many politicians of Britain, and around the world, were calling for the execution of the war criminals.

Albert Pierrepoint, a British executioner was sent to the trials in 1945 on behalf of the British occupation authorities. The public were exstatic to see 'one of their own' handing out justice to the Nazi officers, and soon, Pierrepoint became the only celebrated executioned in Britain. His work in Germany threw him into the spotloght, showing him on televised programmes such as Newsnight. He gave advice on hanging, explaining the correct method, and explained how it had gone wrong so many times before. (Including during the Nazi war criminals' execustions by all acounts.)

The public had a macarbe fascination with Pierrepoint. For many years, executions were carried out behind closed doors, with very few details being released. People had become dettatched to the idea of the death penalty, as it seldom played a role in their lives. When the Nazi War Trials began, it thrust the idea of execution onto the public, offering them redemption for the atrocities caused during the war.