Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital (, derived via the Latin from , "head") refers to execution by beheading, but there are various other methods of execution.
Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, mass murder, child murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression.
As of 2026, 53 countries retain capital punishment, 111 countries have taken a position to abolish it de jure for all crimes, 9 have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes), and 23 are abolitionist in practice. Although the majority of countries have abolished capital punishment, over half of the world's population lives in countries where the death penalty is retained. As of 2023, only 2 out of 38 OECD member countries (the United States and Japan) allow capital punishment.
Capital punishment is controversial, with many people, organisations, religious groups, and states holding differing views on its ethical permissibility. Amnesty International declares that the death penalty breaches human rights, specifically "the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." These rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. In the European Union (EU), the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. The Council of Europe, which has 46 member states, has worked to end the death penalty; no execution has taken place in its current member states since 1997. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, throughout the years from 2007 to 2020,A Record 120 Nations Adopt UN Death-Penalty Moratorium Resolution, 18 December 2018, Death Penalty Information Center eight non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with support for eventual abolition.
History
Nearly all societies in human history have executed criminals and dissidents since the beginning of civilization. Until the nineteenth century, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable alternative to ensure deterrence and incapacitation of criminals.
The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history. Most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishments for wrongdoing generally included blood money compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment, and execution. In tribal societies, compensation and shunning were often considered sufficient as forms of justice.So common was the practice of compensation that the word murder is derived from the French word mordre (bite), a reference to the heavy compensation one must pay for causing an unjust death. The "bite" one had to pay was used as a term for the crime itself: "Mordre wol out; that se we day by day." – Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400), The Canterbury Tales, The Nun's Priest's Tale, l. 4242 (1387–1400), repr. In The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Alfred W. Pollard, et al. (1898). The response to crimes committed by neighbouring tribes, clans, or communities included a formal apology, compensation, blood feuds, and tribal warfare.
A blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails, or an arbitration system is nonexistent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of an arbitration system based on the state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes, or a code of honour. "Acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies (as well as potential allies) that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished."Translated from Waldmann, op.cit., p. 147.
In most countries that practice capital punishment, it is now reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries, sexual crimes, such as rape, fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, and bestiality carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as Hudud, Zina, and Qisas crimes, such as apostasy (formal renunciation of the state religion), blasphemy, moharebeh, hirabah, Fasad, Mofsed-e-filarz and witchcraft. In many countries that use the death penalty, drug trafficking and often drug possession are also capital offences. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption and financial crimes are punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world, courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.
Ancient history
Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements, often conducted in a religious context, as well as compensation systems. Compensation was based on the principle of substitution, which might include material compensation (for example, cattle, enslaved people, land), the exchange of brides or grooms, or the payment of blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, or transfers of property or blood money, or, in some cases, an offer of a person for execution. The person offered for execution did not have to be the original perpetrator of the crime because the social system was based on tribes and clans, not individuals. Blood feuds could be regulated at meetings, such as the Norsemen things.Lindow, op.cit. (primarily discusses Icelandic things). Systems deriving from blood feuds may survive alongside more advanced legal systems or be given recognition by courts (for example, trial by combat or blood money). One of the more modern refinements of the blood feud is the duel.
In certain parts of the world, nations emerged as ancient republics, monarchies, or tribal oligarchies. Common linguistic, religious, or family ties often united these nations. Moreover, the expansion of these nations often occurred through the conquest of neighbouring tribes or nations. Consequently, various classes of royalty, nobility, various commoners, and enslaved people emerged. Accordingly, the systems of tribal arbitration were subsumed into a more unified system of justice, which formalized relations among the different "social classes" rather than "tribes". The earliest and most famous example is the Code of Hammurabi, which prescribed different punishments and compensation based on the classes or groups of victims and perpetrators. The Torah/Old Testament lays down the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, practicing magic, violation of the Sabbath, blasphemy, and a range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were exceedingly rare, if they occurred at all.
Describing punishment in the Persian empire, Herodotus mentions approvingly that no one, not even an enslaved person, can be executed for only a single crime. A Peshotanu was a condemned person in Persia.
Ancient Greece
The Athenian legal system that replaced customary oral law was first written down by Draco in about 621 BC: the death penalty was applied for a particularly wide range of crimes, though Solon later repealed Draco's code and published new laws, retaining capital punishment only for intentional homicide, and only with victim's family permission. The word draconian derives from Draco's laws. The Romans also used the death penalty for a wide range of offences.
Protagoras (whose thought is reported by Plato) criticised the principle of revenge, because once the damage is done, it cannot be cancelled by any action. So, if the death penalty is to be imposed by society, it is only to protect society against the criminal or for a dissuasive purpose. "The only right that Protagoras knows is therefore human right, which, established and sanctioned by a sovereign collectivity, identifies itself with positive or the law in force of the city. In fact, it finds its guarantee in the death penalty which threatens all those who do not respect it."
Plato saw the death penalty as a means of purification, because crimes were a "defilement". Thus, in the Laws, he considered it necessary to execute the animal or destroy the object that caused the death of a man by accident. For the murderers, he considered that the act of homicide was not natural and was not fully consented to by the criminal. Homicide is thus a disease of the soul, which must be reeducated as much as possible, and, as a last resort, sentenced to death if no rehabilitation is possible.
According to Aristotle, for whom free will is proper to man, a person is responsible for their actions. If there was a crime, a judge must determine the penalty, allowing the crime to be annulled by compensation. This is how pecuniary compensation appeared for criminals, the least recalcitrant, and whose rehabilitation was deemed possible. However, for others, he argued, the death penalty is necessary.
This philosophy aims, on the one hand, to protect society and, on the other, to compensate for the consequences of the crime. It influenced Western criminal law until the 17th century, when the first reflections on abolishing the death penalty emerged.
Ancient Rome The Twelve Tables, the body of laws handed down from archaic Rome, prescribe the death penalty for a variety of crimes, including libel, arson, and theft. During the Late Republic, there was consensus among the public and legislators to reduce the incidence of capital punishment. This opinion led to voluntary exile being prescribed in place of the death penalty, whereby a convict could either choose to leave in exile or face execution.
A historic debate, followed by a vote, took place in the Roman Senate to decide the fate of Catiline's allies when he attempted to seize power in December, 63 BC. Cicero, then Roman consul, argued in support of the killing of conspirators without judgment by decision of the Senate (Senatus consultum ultimum) and was supported by the majority of senators; among the minority voices opposed to the execution, the most notable was Julius Caesar. The custom was different for foreigners who did not hold rights as Roman citizens, and especially for enslaved people, who were transferrable property.