Death penalty

Use and criminalization of death sentences in the world in 2022: Abolished for all crimes, including war crimes. Visible only for crimes committed in exceptional circumstances, such as those committed in time of war (crimes against humanity). Admitted as a criminal sanction, but not applied for a long time. Admitted as a criminal sanction; applied regularly.

The death penalty, capital punishment or execution consists of causing the death of a person convicted by the State, as punishment for commit a crime established in the legislation. It must be distinguished from extrajudicial executions, since these are carried out without due legal process. The crimes for which this sanction is usually applied are called "capital crimes". There is a debate, legal and philosophical, regarding the death penalty.

The execution of criminals and political dissidents has been used by most societies throughout history, both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. Currently the legal situation of the death penalty varies according to the regions of the world. Thus, it has been abolished and penalized in almost all European countries (except Russia and Belarus), and most of those corresponding to Oceania (such as Australia, New Zealand and East Timor). Most Latin American countries have abolished the death penalty, while in countries like the United States and most Caribbean states it is still applied. In Asia, the death penalty is permitted in countries such as China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, North Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Iran and Japan. In Africa, it is still used in several countries, especially in the northeastern part of the continent, it is still applied in most Arab countries and throughout the Middle East. The countries that have put an end to it are 160 of which 104 are totally abolitionist, six prevent it for ordinary crimes, in another six there is a moratorium and 44 are "actually abolitionist" and they do not apply capital punishment.

In many countries where the death penalty is still applied, it is used as a punishment for crimes of murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military law. In some countries it is also applied to punish sexual crimes, being considered as such adultery or sodomy. Also punishable by death, in some Muslim countries, apostasy, the formal renunciation of one's own religion. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of political corruption are punishable by death. In some countries, the death penalty is used for political reasons, as widely as possible, as a "lecture" for the masses: in 2007 in North Korea the director of a company was executed as punishment for having made numerous telephone calls abroad.

The issue of the death penalty is highly controversial. Supporters of it believe that its implementation reduces crime, prevents its repetition and is a form of punishment for murder. Detractors argue that it does not reduce crime any more than life imprisonment; they are worse than the crime and is de facto discrimination against poor minorities who may not have sufficient resources in the legal system.

In 2015, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were responsible for nearly 90% of executions, according to Amnesty International (AI). This figure does not include executions in China, which AI believes are in the thousands, but does not official figures are available. In 2020, according to Amnesty International, the ranking of executions continued to be led by China, as in previous years. The total number of death sentences during 2020 was at least 1,477, among which 483 executions could have been confirmed.

However, in 2015 four countries abolished capital punishment for all crimes (Republic of the Congo, Fiji, Madagascar and Suriname), and in 2016 Benin and Nauru did the same. In 2019, 56 countries kept in their legislation the death penalty, but of them a total of 28 countries have gone at least a decade without carrying out executions.

History of the death penalty

The use of the death penalty dates back to the beginning of history.

Ancient Age

Crucifixion, ancient Rome.

Many historical records, as well as primitive tribal practices, indicate that the death penalty has been a part of penal systems since the very beginning of their existence. It remained a standard punishment for a host of crimes in the Sumerian city-states, in ancient Israel, in Babylonia and Persia, in Greece, and in Rome.

Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, capital punishment remained very common not only in Western Europe, but also in Byzantium and pre-Columbian America. In America, the practice of capital punishment was carried out by the different ethnic groups of the region, Incas, Muiscas, Aztecs, Mixtecs and Zapotecs.

Modern and Contemporary Age

The German soldiers guide Polish woman to execution near Warsaw, 1940.

After the efforts of enlightened men like Cesare Beccaria, the guillotine was the symbol of the Reign of Terror at the time of the French Revolution. Karl Marx wrote that "the world has never been corrected or intimidated by punishment." In the 20th century, authoritarian states have used the death penalty as a method of political oppression.

The Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals established for the punishment of crimes committed during World War II applied the death penalty.

Abolition of the death penalty

History

Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.

According to Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian wars, in the year 427 BC. In BC, Diodotus, arguing that capital punishment had no deterrent value, persuaded the Assembly of Athens to reverse its decision to execute all adult males in the rebellious city of Mytilene.

In the first century AD, Amandagamani, the Buddhist king of Landa, Sri Lanka, abolished the death penalty during his reign, as did several of his successors.

In the Far East, the earliest historical record of the abolition of the death penalty comes from the Tang Dynasty in China, where it was outlawed by Emperor Xuanzong in the mid-century viii. For his part, the Japanese Emperor Shomu abolished capital punishment in 724, based on the Buddhist belief in the sanctity of all life. The penalty was reinstated in 810 and abolished again by Emperor Saga in 818. It was then reinstated in 1159, and remains in effect to this day.

Already in the Middle Ages, an opinion against the death penalty was included in England in The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, a text written in 1395. In the same country, in the Modern Age, Thomas More (1478- 1535) —who ended up being executed for not recognizing the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon— in his work Utopia, he opposed the death penalty for religious reasons.

Contemporary Age

Justice refusing to receive a few heads from the hand of a man with a sword. Published in the work of crimes and penalties (Cesare Beccaria).

The current abolitionist movement is considered to have started following the publication in Italy of the Milanese jurist Cesare Beccaria's book, On Crimes and Punishments in 1764. Through it, Beccaria sought to demonstrate not only injustice, but also the very futility of capital punishment and torture from the point of view of social policy. Beccaría also explained the criminogenic nature of the death penalty applicable to crimes that are not really serious: “The penalties must be proportional to the seriousness of the crimes. If all the penalties are equally rigorous, the delinquent will always commit the felony”. On February 3, 1766, the Church condemned the book and included it in the Index, the list of prohibited works. There it remained until its disappearance in June 1966, thanks to the Second Vatican Council.

Influenced by Beccaría's book, Leopold of Habsburg, a famous enlightened monarch and future Emperor of Austria, abolished the death penalty in the then-independent Grand Duchy of Tuscany on November 30, 1786, after having arrested of de facto executions (the last one was carried out in 1769). On that date, Leopoldo promulgated the reform of the penal code that abolished the death penalty, and ordered the destruction of all the instruments used in its application, in what would be the first formal prohibition of modern times. In the year 2000, the Tuscany's regional authorities established November 30 as an annual holiday, in order to commemorate the event. That same date is used worldwide in some 300 cities with the same objective, forming a protest movement that is called Cities for Life Day.

In Spain, in 1809 Joseph I Bonaparte ordered execution only with a vile club, but soon after he changed his mind. In 1832 the gallows was definitively replaced by the garrote, which was applied until the final abolition of capital punishment. The Second Republic briefly abolished capital punishment in the 1930s XX century, reinstating it shortly afterwards. crimes deserving of such punishment increased. After the latest executions of terrorists from Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and the Anti-Fascist and Patriotic Revolutionary Front in the last years of Francoism, the approval of the 1978 Constitution meant the abolition of capital punishment, "except for what military criminal laws may provide for times of war". The reform of the Military Penal Code of 1985 repealed such punishment also in case of war, and the entry of Spain into the European Union strengthened the abolition.

In Latin America, Venezuela abolished capital punishment in 1863, Costa Rica in 1882. Brazil abolished it in 1889, although it was reinstated and abolished again several times. In 1906 it was abolished in Ecuador; in 1907, in Uruguay; in 1910, in Colombia; in Argentina, it was abolished in 1921, but there were several comings and goings (full abolition was sanctioned in 2008). In Mexico, the federal penal code of 1871 abolished capital punishment only for women over 70 years of age, so it was only definitively abolished at the federal level in 1929 (little by little such punishment was abolished in the penal codes of the different countries). federated states, until the process was completed with the Sonora state code in 1975). In 2005 it was expressly prohibited in Article 22 of the Constitution.

The declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations of 1977 established as desirable "to progressively restrict the number of crimes that can be punished with the death penalty, being desirable the future abolition of that punishment".

In the United States, more and more States abolish the death penalty, currently 23 along with the District of Columbia are no longer applying it. The most recent was the Commonwealth of Virginia abolishing it in March 2021.

European abolition legislation

European International Law considers in any case capital punishment in times of peace as an attack on human rights. Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ratified by all European countries except Russia and Belarus) prohibited capital punishment from May 1, 1983 in common criminal law. Russia, although it has not ratified the Sixth Protocol (abolition in peacetime), and although it allows the death penalty according to its legislation, it has decreed a moratorium on the use of capital punishment since it became part of the Council of Europe. In fact, the Constitutional Court of Russia ruled the abolition of the death penalty as of January 2010.

By means of the thirteenth additional protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, since May 3, 2002, capital punishment is also prohibited in wartime in countries that have ratified it. Several European states or members of the Council of Europe have not yet ratified Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, so they have no international obligation to avoid the use of the death penalty in wartime or in imminent danger of war. Specifically, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, France, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Spain, although both Italy and Spain have signed the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in this sense, and Spain, although it includes it in its Constitution, expressly prohibited the use of capital punishment in wartime in 2006.

The European Union demands the ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights and the total abolition of the death penalty as a requirement for the entry into the Union of new members (Copenhagen Criteria), and the same happens with the Council of Europe, which has promoted abolition in several European countries. The European Charter of Human Rights prohibits the death penalty for the signatory countries, and recognizes inmates the right to avail themselves of the most favorable legislation (that of the Charter, that of the European Convention on Human Rights, or that of the national constitutions). As a result, the death penalty is not and cannot be applied in practice in Europe.

Turkey, which in recent years has been making efforts to join the European Union, has carried out a reform of its legal system. The last execution in Turkey took place in 1984, from which time there was a de facto moratorium on its application. In August 2002, the possibility of applying the death penalty in peacetime was removed from Turkish law, and in May 2004 the constitution was amended to remove the death penalty in all circumstances. Turkey signed Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights in 2004.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been pressuring the Council of Europe observer states that still apply the death penalty (the United States and Japan) to ban its application, or lose their observer state status. In addition to promoting the abolition of the death penalty in its member states, the European Union has prohibited the extradition of criminals in cases where the claiming country could attempt to apply the death penalty.

The death penalty in international law

International law worldwide does not consider capital punishment as an attack because it is against human rights, but it does try to restrict its application, subject its imposition to certain minimum guarantees, and encourage states to abolish it.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

The Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of December 19, 1966, in its art. 6.2, authorizes the application of the death penalty only a) for the most serious crimes b) only in the cases legally provided for and in force when the crime was committed, c) only by virtue of a final sentence issued by a competent court, and d) provided that the laws applied do not violate the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Second Optional Protocol to the Pact, dated December 15, 1989, commits countries that voluntarily sign such additional protocol to the total abolition of the death penalty.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in its art. 37, provides that "The death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of release shall not be imposed for crimes committed by minors under 18 years of age. This convention has been signed and ratified by all the countries of the world. The United Nations Subcommittee for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights maintains that the death penalty applied to minors is contrary to customary international law. However, several countries have executed minors since the 1990s: China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States and Yemen, and in the parastatal Islamic sharia courts in Somalia.

American Convention on Human Rights

The American Convention on Human Rights, in its art. 4, establishes that in countries that have not abolished the death penalty, it may only be imposed for the most serious crimes, in compliance with the final judgment of a competent court and in accordance with a law that establishes such a penalty, issued prior to the commission of the crime. Nor will it apply to political or related crimes, nor will it extend its application to crimes to which it is not currently applied.

African Charter on Human and Peoples ' Rights

Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (“African Charter”) recognizes the right to life, but does not expressly refer to the death penalty. Article 5.3 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, however, guarantees the inapplicability of the death penalty to crimes committed by children; and article 4.2 of the Maputo Protocol establishes that it should not be applied to pregnant or lactating women.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) established a working group on the death penalty. The African Commission has issued resolutions in 1999 and 2008 calling on States to observe a moratorium on the execution of death sentences, with a view to abolishing the death penalty. In November 2010, the Working Group recommended that the African Commission move towards drafting a protocol to the African Charter on the abolition of the death penalty in Africa.

International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court, established in the Rome Statute, which entered into force in 2002, excluded the death penalty as a possible sanction; life imprisonment is the maximum possible sentence. This is also the case for the tribunals established over the past two decades to try war crimes committed in Yugoslavia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Sierra Leone (2002) and Cambodia (2004).

UN moratorium on the death penalty

Current situation

Since the post-World War II period, there has been a worldwide trend towards the abolition of the death penalty. The use of the death penalty is increasingly restricted in countries that still apply it. During the 1980s, the democratization of Latin America led to a large increase in the number of abolitionist countries.

As of the end of 2019, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes and 142 prohibited it in law or practice. According to Amnesty International (AI), the official figure of at least 657 executions worldwide that year does not include the thousands of executions that presumably took place in China. And it is that this country continued to be the world's largest executor, although the true magnitude of the phenomenon is unknown as the data related to the death penalty is classified as a State secret. Excluding this country, 86% of known executions took place in just four countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Iran.

In 2020, according to Amnesty International's annual report, the ranking of executions was led by China, as in previous years, although state secrecy made it impossible to know the number of convictions, followed by Iran with 246 registered executions, Egypt with 107, Iraq with a minimum of 45, Saudi Arabia with 27 and the United States (USA) with 17 executions. Somalia, Yemen, India and Oman would follow, although it would not have been possible to obtain minimally reliable data in other countries either. The total number of death sentences in 2020 was at least 1,477, among which 483 executions could have been confirmed., 16 of them women, 26% less than the previous year, although the pandemic situation could have influenced the delay in legal proceedings.

The number of countries where the organization is aware of having carried out executions is 18, two less than the previous year. In some places, such as Japan, Pakistan or Belarus, there would have been no execution this year, unlike the previous one, while in others where the sentence was still formally in force, such as Russia, South Korea or Algeria, they could be considered close. to a possible abolition, since they had not applied the death penalty for more than 10 years. Amnesty International had no information on any execution on the European continent during 2020, but at least in Belarus there were a minimum of four final sentences, pending commutation or compliance.

In numerous cases, the application of the death penalty was a clear violation of international law. Whether it was due to the public nature of some executions (Iran), the execution of minors (also Iran), the application to people with some mental disability (United States or Pakistan), or its application in crimes that would not have involved murder or manslaughter, such as drug trafficking, economic crimes, rape, rebellion, espionage or the ambiguous concepts of blasphemy or acts against national security. Among the methods that were still used, executions (China and Iran, among others), plagues (Arab countries, Iran or India), lethal injection (China and the United States), the electric chair (also in the US) predominated. or beheading (Saudi Arabia), possibly the cruelest system then used.

For its part in the United States, although by 2022 23 of its 50 states had formally abolished it, and another three have a moratorium, others such as Texas concentrated more than a third of the 1,500 executions since the restoration of the sentence in 1976, after a 10-year suspension by the Supreme Court. Of particular concern, according to Amnesty International, was the reactivation of death row by federal jurisdiction under the presidency of Donald Trump, which resulted in 10 executions in less than 6 months, an unprecedented number in the previous four decades, in which only three executions had been carried out pursuant to federal court sentences. On the other hand, according to the US Death Penalty Information Center, the number of black people executed for murdering white people since 1976, nearly 300, was 15 times the number of white people executed for murder of black people, which had been 21 so far, when the number of interracial murders was just over double in the first case.

In 2020, there were 123 states in the world that supported the establishment of a moratorium on executions worldwide, a significantly higher number of countries than in the years 2000 or 2010, which, according to Amnesty International, was a first step to achieve, in the medium term, its full abolition.

In relation to capital punishment, there may be several types of countries or systems:

'Retentionist' Countries

William Kemmler was the first person executed in the electric chair.

They are the ones who preserve and apply the death penalty. Among the retentionist countries where a restricted capital punishment is maintained, are the United States or Japan, which apply the penalty only in cases of extremely serious common crimes, especially blood crimes.

Other countries carry out a broad capital punishment, with numerous common capital crimes and frequent application. Some retentionist countries have an exorbitant capital punishment, in which behaviors considered immoral are sentenced to death, for example, certain sexual behaviors such as homosexuality or crimes related to religious matters.

Some retentionist countries also accept international standards on how to impose the death penalty (absence of extrajudicial executions, procedural guarantees, right to effective remedies, possibility of requesting pardons, judicial possibility of opting for alternative punishment to capital, no execution of minors, disabled or pregnant...). However, other countries carry out an arbitrary application of capital punishment (Iran, China, Afghanistan).

China is the country where the most death sentences are carried out, according to Amnesty International (AI). Despite the fact that the statistics on the death penalty are considered a state secret and revealing them could lead to a criminal sanction, the NGO calculates that the Asian country executes thousands of people each year, a higher figure than the total number of victims in the rest of the countries combined It is followed by Iran, which has executed 400 people since the beginning of 2011. Many of these convictions were public hangings.

In the United States, Texas is the state that carries out the most executions, with 370 between 1976 and 2006. Between 1976 and 2021, the United States executed 1,532 people; 22 of them had committed the crime while they were minors. Singapore is the country with the most executions per capita in the world, with 70 hangings for a population of about 4 million. Iran, for its part, carried out 159 executions in 2004.

'Abolitionist' Countries

They are the ones who have abolished the death penalty for all kinds of crimes and circumstances. Most European countries are in this group, since the Council of Europe strictly requires member states to expressly prohibit the death penalty, with the exception of Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which still it authorizes the use of capital punishment for wartime crimes. The only member that still avails itself of this exception is Belarus: that is the reason that country is excluded from the Council of Europe.

Some countries have resumed the practice of capital punishment after having suspended executions for long periods. The most notable cases are those of the United States, which suspended executions in 1973 but started them again in 1977; India, where there were no executions between 1995 and 2004; and Sri Lanka, which has recently declared an end to its moratorium on the death penalty, but has yet to carry out any executions. Capital punishment was reintroduced in the Philippines in 1993 after its abolition in 1987, but was abolished again in 2006.

"Quasiabolitionist" or "de facto abolitionists"

The quasi-abolitionists are the ones who reserve the possibility of applying the death penalty in case of war, but who really have not applied it for a long time. For example, Brazil or Chile.

The "de facto abolitionist" are those in which the death penalty is still formally in force, but there are no convictions or the execution of those convicted (moratoriums on the application of the death penalty); for example, Morocco or Russia.

Capital Offenses

Since the centuryXIXthe catalogue of capital crimes has been significantly reduced in most countries. In most States with a death penalty, the death penalty is currently applied only for particularly serious crimes, such as blood (murder, parricide or homicide). Some States also punish, in time of war, crimes of treason, espionage, sabotage, or desertion.

In states with an Islamic majority, due to the influence of sharia (Islamic law), a body of law, the death penalty is applied to the following conducts:

• homosexual acts, including in private (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Somalia);
• adultery (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan);
• (Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia)
• (Saudi Arabia);

Methods used in the execution of capital punishment

San Quintin State Prison Execution Chamber, United States.

Historically, the methods used have been varied: bonfire, hanging, beheading, assault, stoning, firing squad, throwing to the wild beasts, drowning in water, collapsing a wall over the executed person, walling up, strangling, stabbing, dismembering, crucifixion, poisoning, swallowing molten lead, being run over by a car, being trampled by elephants, electrocution, impalement, etc.

Since the end of the 18th century there has been a worldwide tendency to use forms of execution that involve less suffering, or more "humanitarian". Around this time, for example, the guillotine appeared in France, while the UK outlawed hanging by dismemberment by horse at the turn of the century XIX, and Spain prohibited hanging as cruel and infamous in 1832, replacing it with the vile garrote.

The electric chair and gas chamber were eventually introduced in the United States as more humane methods of execution than hanging, but have been largely displaced in favor of lethal injection, which itself has been criticized as too much painful. Despite everything, some Islamic countries still use methods of "slow" hanging, beheading by sword, wall collapse over the executed (Afghanistan) and even stoning. In China, according to data from 2003, the usual system is that of firing squad.

Amnesty International indicated that in 2019 the execution methods used worldwide were the following: beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and firing squad.

Controversy and debate

Numerous philosophers, politicians, religionists and intellectuals have opposed the death penalty. In addition, most of the democratic and developed countries have abolished capital punishment. However, in favor of the death penalty it is usually argued that it is a just and moral punishment (ethical argument), or that it is an effective punishment for prevent crimes (utilitarian argument), either the religious or authority argument.

According to its detractors, even supposing that the death penalty was effective for the prevention of crimes, it would be admissible, since the end should not justify the means if they are seriously immoral. Additionally, the death penalty implies the necessity to create the office of executioner. However, this concept of the executioner only exists in the minds of abolitionists since in that of retentionists it does not have any degraded character.

The efficacy of the death penalty to prevent new crimes by the convicted person is also questioned. The possibility that prisoners sentenced to many years in prison flee or commit serious crimes for society is, with modern high-security prisons, practically negligible. This argument has been criticized by those who prevent new crimes from the death penalty, especially when its applicability is commonly known and its effective application is publicized (with news about executions, public executions, or televised broadcasts): It scares potential future perpetrators of the crimes punished with it more effectively than other types of penalties, thus better preventing those crimes.

The death penalty can be criminogenic. Paradoxically, it can favor the commission of crimes since, once a capital crime has been committed, the criminal no longer has anything to lose, he can continue killing, for example, the police officers who he comes to arrest him, or the witnesses, in the hope of escaping punishment. While he is locked up for years awaiting execution he can commit any crime without fearing any greater penalty than the death that already awaits him. If, for example, a rape is punishable by capital punishment, the rapist is encouraged to kill the victim, thus getting rid of an incriminating witness without having to fear any additional penalty for the murder.

Lack of real deterrent effectiveness. In fact, the death penalty is no more of a deterrent, no more help to prevent crime than long prison sentences. Since executions are no longer carried out in public in most countries, much of the presumed exemplary impact is lost. of the same. Whoever commits a murder either does it at a more or less thoughtless and emotional moment (in which case the penalty does not play any role), or does it with great planning hoping not to be caught. The most serious crimes are not avoided with the death penalty, but with an honest and efficient police and courts and with arms control and an adequate economic and social policy.

On the other hand, for a sector of retentionists, capital punishment is cheaper than keeping the condemned criminal locked up for life at the expense of the society victim of his crimes. However, according to abolitionists, in a State of law, life is the supreme good par excellence for people and society, it is the "fundamental right" essential. Death is absolute evil, so it is immoral to rejoice in it or provoke it to obtain some kind of benefit from it. So, if torture and mutilation, or even public humiliation, are rejected as punishments for crimes due to their manifestly cruel, inhuman and unworthy nature, the death penalty, which is even worse, must be rejected with all the more reason.

In situations of war, in which the State is in a situation of necessity, although the penalty is extremely harsh for the crimes for which it is applied, which normally would not be worthy of it, it is the only effective penalty to prevent desertions, acts of cowardice, treason, defeatism, or smuggling, otherwise the perpetrators of such crimes might prefer jail to risk death on the battlefield, or the traitors might expect to be saved by the enemy if he finally came out triumphant. This argument does not directly justify the death penalty in general, but admits or understands it based on a situation of necessity that makes the rules vary provisionally.

Revenge

Although the desire for revenge is humanly understandable or excusable, it cannot base an accusatory system on a Rule of Law, nor is the just punishment that a desire for revenge requires. The acceptance by the State of the idea that death can be an adequate punishment legitimizes death, which is absolute evil, and the idea of revenge, and contributes to raising the social acceptance of private revenge and the use of violence. The application of primitive Law of retaliation (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life) doubles evil, but does not mitigate it, so that society as a whole suffers even more as a consequence of the execution of revenge.

This argument is counter-argued that it distinguishes justice and revenge, when the claim of revenge is not unfair as long as the punishment claimed is not disproportionate to the damage inflicted, considering that it is the only just punishment for certain heinous crimes (murder, rape of children...), especially those who deprive others of their lives, which are irreplaceable goods. It can also be considered as the only penalty that gives some comfort or satisfaction to the relatives of those murdered for whom they are going to be executed, that they deserve better treatment than the one that is going to be given to the criminal.

No one can compensate the deceased anymore. In some cases, the relatives of the victims do not feel comforted or satisfied after the execution, or at least not to a greater extent than before the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment, and on the contrary, the imposition of this sentence increases the horror at what happened. This argument, however, has been refuted by some people, since some families of the victims affirm that it was only after the execution of their loved ones by the executioner that they were able to find some peace and start to rebuild their lives.

Human Rights

The State was created to protect the life and common interests of people, and has no right to take life. Granting the State the right to kill, even if only in certain circumstances, breaks the principle of the intangibility of human life derived from the dignity of human beings, and implies that the authorities have the right to dispose of lives, that they cease to deserve the utmost respect. If it is admitted that life is not absolutely untouchable for the State, citizens are defenseless against the greatest possible attack by state power, the attack against existence itself, and they will no longer be citizens but subjects, since they would have been degraded to the category of simple means to achieve the ends of state power. A State that can commit "legal murders" he puts himself at the same level as the criminal who has killed to achieve his ends, so that morally he does not differ from the criminal who despised those values that the State should defend.

Whoever commits certain very serious crimes has broken the social contract and no longer has any right against the society that has suffered their crimes, not even the right to life or to the protection of society, because whoever commits them has broken with it his ties with her.

Painless execution

The death penalty, whatever the method used, causes extreme psychological suffering (panic, anguish, depression, paradoxically suicidal ideation, and all this sometimes for years), not only to the prisoner before and during the execution, but also to their relatives and relatives.

The execution of the death penalty generates affliction for many people close to those executed. In addition, it implies the existence of execution methods, all of them cruel and inhumane: firing squad, hanging, strangulation with a vile club, stabbing, stoning, dismemberment, guillotine, beheading, electric chair, lethal injection...sometimes, the attempt to kill is not successful the first time, having to repeat the homicidal attempts, causing more pain and anguish to those executed and their relatives or people who witness the death. execution or know of it.

Wrongful execution

Police or judicial bodies may err when finding out the truth, when assessing the author's personal circumstances that influenced his guilt or responsibility, or when determining the just sentence for the alleged criminal. In this context, the death penalty can cause false confessions by detainees and erroneous convictions. The threat of the death penalty produces the same effects as torture: It makes certain defendants agree with the Police or the Prosecutor's Office and accept unfair sentences, even for crimes not committed, given the possibility of being sentenced to death if they do not "they confess".

The existence of the death penalty implies accepting that there will necessarily be a certain number of innocent people who will be executed. In a study looking at the characteristics of death row inmates whose innocence was later proven through DNA evidence, more than one in five had confessed their guilt to something in which they were not involved. The irreversibility of the death penalty implies the impossibility of compensating the victims of judicial errors, and that several innocent people or people not so seriously guilty as to deserve it are executed, which undermines the legitimacy of the accusatory system that is based on the presumption of innocence.

Capital punishment does not rehabilitate. In an accusatory system, punishments must be aimed not only at restoring justice and preventing crime, but also at rehabilitating offenders. The death penalty takes away from the criminal the possibility of making amends and reconciling with society and with the victims of the crime, and the possibility of trying to compensate or indemnify the victim.

This argument is opposed by the fact that there is no way to compensate the victim of a murder or homicide, as well as the impossibility of rehabilitation of certain types of criminals.

Racial, ethnic, and social class bias

Faced with the same crime, defendants with greater economic capacity are usually able to avoid the death penalty by being able to hire more capable lawyers who are committed to their case; the poor, uneducated or with mental problems or those belonging to socially discriminated minorities tend to be more likely to be sentenced to death. In processes with a possible death penalty, subjective issues are often taken into account (the intention of the perpetrator of the crime, the existence or inexistence of unworthy motivations to commit the crime, etc.) that can be appreciated in one way or another by judges or juries (sometimes subjected to strong emotional pressure due to the presence or testimonies of the victims or the state of public opinion that demands an "exemplary" sentence) based on its subjectivity.

Public opinion on the death penalty

In democratic countries, with the notable exceptions of the United States and Japan, the death penalty is not applied. In some abolitionist countries, however, the majority of the population continues to support or has supported the death penalty, but the abolition certainly had to be adopted as a result of political changes, such as the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one, as abolition was considered required to be a democratic country that respects human rights. It also influenced the countries of Eastern Europe the fact that abolition became a necessary condition to be able to integrate into the European Union.

In pro-capital countries, the government's view often has broad popular support and receives little attention from the political class or the media. Some states in the United States have outlawed the death penalty for decades (the first to abolish it was Michigan in 1846), while others still practice it; capital punishment is today a controversial topic of discussion in the country.

In abolitionist countries, the debate on the death penalty is sometimes revived in reaction to some particularly brutal murder. However, sudden increases in the number of violent crimes, such as murder or terrorist attacks, have prompted some countries to end their moratoriums on the death penalty. In countries with the death penalty, the debate over the appropriateness of the death penalty capital is usually reactivated every time a case of error in its application comes to light, although this type of event usually causes modifications in the legal system to improve its application, rather than movements towards the prohibition of its use.

Among non-governmental organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have explicitly positioned themselves in the fight against the death penalty as a basic founding objective. In the case of the first of the organizations, its position is clear and conclusive: "Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, the characteristics and the guilt or innocence of the accused and the method used by the State to carry out the execution ".

Religion and the death penalty

Despite this, according to Amnesty International, in contemporary societies "the Muslim world is the most reluctant to abolish the death penalty."