Questions tagged [death-penalty]
Questions related to the history of government-sanctioned capital punishment, wherein the guilty party is executed for crimes committed.
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Has capital penalty ever been a municipal-level decision?
I am curious whether municipal-level courts have ever had the authority to impose the death penalty. The sources I have been able to find that deal with the present-day world all discuss it as a ...
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What was the biggest empire that never had capital punishment? [closed]
I have no idea. So I decided to ask.My motivation is that it would be an interesting juxtaposition of violence and non violence.
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Rose tattoo used to mark convicts condemned to death?
I recall from my university history courses a factoid about rose tattoos being used to mark convicts condemned to death in Europe during the Renaissance period (in case of escape), and was wondering ...
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Why did the Nazis guillotine criminals but mostly hang political enemies, and why were the White Rose group an exception?
Both the methods used and the range of crimes 'meriting' execution changed under the Nazis. Dark History says:
When Hitler came to total power, he decided that criminals and enemies
of the state ...
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Did Lenin order the execution of the Romanovs?
Oddly, the Wikipedia page about the Executions has the soviet leadership saying that Lenin didn't have a part in it:
They acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication of an ...
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Death sentences in Spanish California
Ynocente Garcia, in his recollections (the "Garcia Hechos"), described Ignacio Rochin, a man executed for murder in 1795 in Santa Barbara. Garcia continues: "a young orphan ... was also executed with ...
user18968
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Under what legal theory was Mary Surratt hanged as an assassin of President Lincoln in 1865?
According to every source that I found so far, the only reason Mary Surratt was convicted of taking part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was that the murder conspiracy was plotted in her ...
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First execution by firing squad
What was the first execution by firing squad in history ? Using firearms, that is.
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Why was the swordsman of Calais chosen as Anne Boleyn's executioner?
Anne Boleyn was executed on May 19, 1536.
Displaying an act of "mercy", King Henry VIII dispatched a skilled executioner to perform the execution by sword rather than by axe or being burned at the ...
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What were common reasons people attended executions in mid 1930s.?
In The Green Mile movie (1999) the main character is a guardian in jail and performs death penalty executions. One can see that on such executions some external people come to watch (as "external" I ...
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How old was the youngest white person sentenced to death in the U.S.A?
Death penalty has for a long time been exposing interesting trends of social discrepancies based on life determining attributes like wealth, education race.
How does the answer compare to the ...
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Christian hangmen in Islamic countries?
In an interview a senior researcher at Amnesty International explained that
as far as I know certainly in Punjab and Sind provinces, the two
largest provinces by population, the hangmen [...
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Were any French aristocrats guillotined facing up?
There is a myth that Robespierre was guillotined faced-up (he wasn't); but it raises the question of which aristocrats or disgraced revolutionaries were provably guillotined face-up during the period ...
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When did hanging emerge as a form of capital punishment?
As the title has it: when did hanging emerge as a form of legal execution? The Wikipedia article (linked) has nothing to say about this. I've done the best I can with a search in Google Scholar, but ...
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How many unarmed did Che Guevara kill personally or by order?
How many unarmed did Che Guevara execute kill or by his order?
I've seen numbers that range from 180 to 14,000 yet nothing official.
user4560
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How did the United States penal system evolve? [closed]
The penal system of the United States is unusual in several aspects:
The United States is one of the rare Western nations that retains and practices capital punishment in law and practice.
Prison ...
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Is 529 the largest simultanious death penalty verdict ever?
Recently Egypt made headlines by sentencing 529 people to death in a single court verdict.
I've seen a lot of talk both in the media and online about this being the largest single death penalty ...
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Why did Michigan abolish capital punishment so early?
The US state of Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846, and according to Wikipedia, was the first English-speaking government in the world to do so; the death penalty has not been reinstated ...
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What is the oldest state/nation that has abolished the death penalty?
In 1846 the state of Michigan became the first state in the United States to abolish the use of the death penalty, which still stands today.
Is there any country (or state/province/etc.) elsewhere ...
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When were the heresy laws abolished in England?
We know that during the English Reformation several "heretics" were burnt at the stake. We also know that during the reign of Henry VIII both protestants and catholics were burnt or beheaded while ...
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What happened to all the French guillotines?
Quoting Wikipedia on Guillotine:
The guillotine remained the official method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The last guillotining in France was that of ...
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