Capital Punishment

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of someone as a punishment for a crime. Crimes that can result in capital punishment are called capital crimes or capital offences. A capital crime was originally to be punished by the loss of a head. There has always been controversy surrounding capital punishment. There are religious views that oppose capital punishment. There have been wrongful convictions of the death penalty. There are many international organizations such as the United Nations who oppose the death penalty. In fact, the United Nations called for a universal ban during the General Assembly’s 62nd session in 2007.

The death penalty for criminals and political opponents was used in almost all societies. Other than crime the death penalty was also used to get rid of political dissent. These days, countries that use the death penalty use it only for major crimes such as murder, spying, treason, or drug trafficking. It is also used for military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery, etc also lead to the death penalty. Religious crimes such as apostasy, can also lead to execution.

History

The use of the death penalty dates back to the beginning of recorded history. The death penalty was a part of the justice system. However, in those days crimes were rare in the small communities. Crimes such as murder were almost always crimes of passion. People would hesitate to murder another person. For this reason, execution and even banishment were rare. Compensation and shunning were enough as a punishment. However, outsiders were treated more harshly. Even there small crimes were severely punished. The punishments varied from beatings and enslavements to executions.

For most of history, capital punishments were often cruel and inhumane. These punishments included boiling to death, whipping, slicing, impalement, crushing, disembowelment, the cross, stoning, burning, sawing, decapitation, neck lacing etc. Trends began in the 18th century to move to more humane death penalties. France developed the guillotine, which would simply cut the head off. Hanging was developed, where the criminal would have as thick rope tied around the neck and would be dropped a longer distance.

In 1976, capital punishment was removed from the Criminal Code of Canada as a punishment. After many years of debate and controversy, the parliament decided that capital punishment was not an appropriate punishment. The reasons for this were the possibility of wrongful convictions, accusations that the state was taking the lives of people, and there was also uncertainty as to whether the death penalty was effective. The Parliament replaced the death penalty for murder with a life sentence in jail, with no possibility of parole after 25 years, in case of first-degree murder, and between 10-25 years for second-degree murder.