Noun

Singular death penalty

Plural uncountable

death penalty (uncountable)

1. (law) A punishment in which the person who committed the offence is put to death by the state.

Synonyms

• capital punishment

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from Latin capitalis, literally "regarding the head" (Latin caput). Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by the severing of the head.

Capital punishment has in the past been practiced in virtually every society, although currently only 58 nations actively practice it, with 95 countries abolishing it (the remainder having not used it for 10 years or allowing it only in exceptional circumstances such as war)[10]. It is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region. In the EU member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.

Today, most countries are considered by Amnesty International as abolitionists, which allowed a vote on a nonbinding resolution to the UN to promote the abolition of the death penalty. But more than 60% of the worldwide population live in countries where executions take place insofar as the four most populous countries in the world (the People's Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it at in the near future.

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. Historically, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent.

Sourced

• No man e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law.
  • John Trumbull, McFingal, Canto iii (1782), line 489.

• If we could do away with death, we wouldn’t object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, from Makarie’s Archive (1829).

• Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.
  • Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Modes and Morals, ch. 7 (1920).

• What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?
  • Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961).

• We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.
  • Potter Stewart, Majority opinion in 7-2 ruling that the death penalty is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment for premeditated murder (July 2, 1976)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Mon Feb 8 03:36:48 2010