The Judgment of Death Act 1823 (4 Geo. 4 c. 48) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (although it did not apply to Scotland). Passed at a time when there were over 200 offences in English law which carried a mandatory sentence of death, it gave judges the discretion to pass a lesser sentence for the first time. It did not apply to treason or murder. The act required judges to enter a sentence of death on the court record, but then allowed them to commute the sentence to imprisonment.
Subsequent developments The whole act was repealed for England and Wales by section 56(4) the Courts Act 1971.
The whole act was repealed for the Republic of Ireland by the Statute Law Revision Act 1983.
The whole act was repealed for Northern Ireland by section 1 of, and part IV of the schedule to, the Statute Law Revision (Northern Ireland) Act 1980, which came into force on 13 November 1980. By that time the death penalty in the United Kingdom had essentially ended: it had been abolished for murder in Great Britain in 1965, the last death sentences issued in Northern Ireland were soon commuted to life imprisonment, and no death sentences were subsequently handed down in Great Britain for the crimes that retained it.
See also Capital punishment in the United Kingdom
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