Death Penalty Abolished

Served as an important criminal law, the death penalty continued to be used for a long time. It was undoubtedly believed that the death penalty had promoted the human civilization a lot. However, with time going by and the society progressing, the death penalty seemed to be too much cruel. ‘Pressed under weights; boiled to death in oil; burnt with red-hot pincers and then torn limb from limb by horses; hanged, drawn, and quartered; or drowned’, these are what still existed in European countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Hood & Hoyle 11). ‘Death by a thousand cuts’ was another cold-blooded sentence to the prisoner in China (Hood & Hoyle p11). Other examples in different countries couldn’t be completely listed. It is widely

At last the first success occurred in Pennsylvania, a state in America, in 1794. The death penalty was almost totally abolished, except for the most severe murder, which is called the ‘first-degree’ murder. This way dealing with the death penalty was widely accepted at that time. Later in 1846, Michigan (an American state) became a pioneer in abolishing the death penalty in murder cases. Not long after that, Venezuelan announced the abolition of the death penalty in 1863, thus became the first country to abandon it (If taking the extinct countries into account, the Roman Republic was the first country to abandon the death penalty in 1849, and its constitution was the first one all over the world which specifically figured out this regulation). ‘By the 1860s, the death penalty had been restricted to murder throughout the northern states of the USA (where it became discretionary rather than mandatory), in most parts of Germany, and in England and Wales.’ (Hood&Hoyle

During the regime of Mussolini, the death penalty naturally became one of its effective tools to control the whole society. In Germany, it was even expanded by the Nazis by all means. Under the Third Reich ‘some 16,500 death sentences had been passed’ (J. Evans 630). Up to the beginning of the 1965, there were still only 25 abolitionist countries and only 11 among them completely abolished it. During the next 20 years, the amount of abolitionist countries kept increasing at a small rate. By the end of 1988, there were already 35 countries completely abolished the death penalty while another 17 removed it from all ordinary crimes in peacetime (Hood&Hoyle 14). However, over the 11 years from 1989 to 1999, there was a surprisingly giant increase in the amount of abolitionist countries. In the next 13 years from the end of 2000 to the end of April 2014, 24 more countries abandoned the death penalty for all ordinary crimes (Hood&Hoyle). Up to now, the countries or regions which has not abolished the death penalty are mainly from Asia, the middle East and the north Africa. Also in China, the current situation of keeping the death penalty won’t change in a short