![Margaret Thatcher](/uploads/2/4/1/5/24159712/8600936.png?176)
"I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty."
- Margaret Thatcher, Former United Kingdom Prime Minister
- Margaret Thatcher, Former United Kingdom Prime Minister
The death penalty, and whether it should be practiced, has been debated around the world for centuries. Beginning in the 1990s, the use of capital punishment has been on a decline internationally and many countries have abolished the death penalty.
"The Code of Hammurabi, a legal document from ancient Babylonia (in modern-day Iraq), contained the first known death penalty laws. Under the code, written in the 1700's B.C., twenty-five crimes were punishable by death. These crimes included adultery (cheating on a wife or husband) and helping slaves escape. Murder was not one of the twenty-five crimes."
- JoAnn Bren Guernsey, Death Penalty: Fair Solution or Moral Failure?
"The first prominent European to call for an end to the death penalty, Beccaria is considered the founder of the modern abolition movement... In 1764, Beccaria published his famous Essays on Crimes and Punishments. It was the first major study of the criminal justice system as it operated in eighteenth-century Europe, as well as the first call for the abolition of capital punishment. It remains the most influential attack on the death penalty ever published..."
- Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook
International trends have been moving heavily toward abolition during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, as shown in the graph to the left, there are several countries that practice the death penalty regularly. |
"At least 1,722 people were sentenced to death in 58 countries [excluding China] in 2012. This is a decrease from 2011, when at least 1,923 people were known to have been sentenced in 63 countries worldwide, and a reduction for the second year running (2010: 2,024 death sentences in 67 countries)... It cannot be excluded that executions took place in Egypt and Syria, though none could be confirmed."
- Amnesty International