DEATH PENALTY WHEN LIFE GENERATES DEATH (LEGALLY)

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Death penalty has very old roots; in fact, there is evidence of its application even in peoples such as Babylonians, ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. It is still applied in many fully-developed countries such as the USA. Here is a short history of death penalty in relation to main historical periods or peoples:

 

PRIMITIVE PEOPLES

 

Death penalty was surely widely applied among primitive peoples, but there are no witnesses of written criminal codes left. In fact, laws were handed on orally, and were applied in a quite subjective and arbitrary way by chiefs or other delegates.
Capital punishment was applied mainly for crimes such as murder or theft, and probably for high treason and sacrileges.

 

GREEKS

 

The Greek civilization started in the XV-XIV century b.C. with the occupation of the Greece by the Aeolis and the Dorians, and finished in the I century a.D., with the annexation to the Roman Empire.

The Greek tragedy, in its most ancient expressions, often thinks of the justice as a vendict duty of the victim's sons. So, in Aeschylus' Choephori, uselessly Orestes tries to evade this heavy duty, because Apollo's oracle told him about many pains and illnesses if he doesn't vendicate Agamennon's murder.
In the Greek polis death penalty had many attenuations, particulary in political and constitutional vicissitudes in Athens, losing the meaning of vendict, but for long times executions were left to the initiative of the victim's family.
In some of his works, Plato writes about the usefulness of the penalities as a prevention from other crimes, and also the exceptionality of the death penalty that would be applied only in the most serious cases (sacrilege, murder of relatives, crimes against the State) and to the recidives, remembering the law of retaliation.
Here's what Plato says in his Laws:

"...if someone is proved guilty of a murder, having killed any of these peoples, the judges' slaves will kill him and throw him naked in a cross-road, out of the city; all the judges will bring a stone in the name of the whole State throwing it on the head of the corpse, then will bring him out of the State's frontier and will leave him there unburied; this is the law".

 

BABYLONIANS

 

The Babylonians were a Mesopotamian people; at the age of their maximum expansion, under Hammurabi's dominion (1792-1750 b.C.), they occupated the whole Mesopotamia, the plain where the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers flow, the present Iraq. The Babylonian civilization started in the XIX century b.C. and finished in the VI century b.C., when Babylonia became a province of Cyrus's Persian Empire.

Death penalty was still in use among Babylonians, but there was a very important innovation: the appearance of the first written code, the Hammurabi Code. In this code capital punishment is widely provided for crimes such as theft, murder and wrongs at work (i.e.: If a builder builds a house which isn't solid, gives way and kills the householder, this builder must be killed). But it's not rightful though, because a crime against a rich man is considered more serious than a crime against a poor man or a slave.
It is a great achievement, because arbitrariety and subjectivity are deleted, thanks to written laws. But its limit is that it is too circumstantial: in fact it doesn't take a field of similar crimes into consideration, but it lists them in a very precise way.

 

ROMANS

 

The Romans were a people original of central Italy which in its maximum expansion occupated almost all Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. The Roman civilization started in the VIII century b.C. with the foundation of Rome, and ended in the V century a.D., due to the barbaric invasions.

In the Roman age, at least in the first centuries, the public authority intervened to punish only the crimes against the general order which were extimated public treason. And in these case it intervened in high mode, often with the death penalty. For private crimes the law of retaliation was applied , which often caused the death of the cuplrit.
But not only the treason of the State and other crimes against the State were extimated among heaviest crimes, but also bringing away a boundary-stone which delimitated the border of a ground, stealing the beasts or the harvest from anyone, violating anyone, infringing a promise, lying, stealing during the night, setting a house on fire, stealing from the master, cheating a client.
The punishments, attending to the Law of the XII tables (V century b.C.), were really cruel. The Romans used beheading, flogging till death, hanging, drowning, cutting of the limbs, the stake; the vestals guilty of infidelity were buried alive, because shedding their blood wasn't permitted, and their seducer was beaten till death; public enemies, slaves who had stolen something from the master, culprits of false witness were thrown by the Tarpeia cliff; for the slaves, and for those peoples who were not Roman citizens, there was the crucifixion, a penalty particulary long and painful.
There are also many examples of other methods: the king Tullo Ostilio, for example, quartered Mettio Fufetio because he had violated the pacts with Rome, fastening him to two wagons which were then lauched in opposite directions.
Also in the long run there was this kind of punishments among the Romans; still in 71 b.C. more than 6,000 men who followed Spartacus in his rebellion against Rome were crucified along the streets, and in the first centuries of the vulgar age the christians, extimated coulpable of overthrowing the public order, were given to the bests like meal in the amphitheatre.

 

ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

 

The ancient Egyptians were a North-African people, who occupated the present Egypt; the Egyptian civilization started in the IV millennium b.C. and ended in the IV century a.D., due to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great and the admission to the Persian Empire.

Among ancient Egyptians, death penalty is applied for those who break Maat, the universal Law strictly observed in Egypt. This law includes crimes such as murder, theft, sacrilege, attempt on Pharaon (seen as a guarantor of the Law) and spying. There is no arbitrariety, judgements are equal for everyone, the rich and the poor, the noble and the meek; or at least, it should be so.
Death penalty is applied through beheading, sacrifice, or drowning in the Nile in a close sack.

 

PRE-COLUMBIAN PEOPLES

 

Pre-Columbian peoples (Maya, Aztecans, Incas) were original of central America; there are still now few Maya communities in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Salvador. These communities started developing in the XVI century b.C. and finished in the XVII century a.D., when they were destroyed by the Spanish. In pre-Columbian communities were no prisons; the robbery was punished with slavery and the murder with death, if the cuplrit couldn't indemnify the victims; the moral code didn't differentiate between intentional and unintentional murder. Also the adultery, considerated a crime against the ownership, was punished with the death: the culprit was consigned to the injured hisband, who would kill him throwing a big stone on his head. FROM MIDDLE AGES TO TODAY In Europe, in the Middle Ages, there's a great confusion and overlapping of powers, because the feudal system provided many powerful men, the king or the emperor and the feudatories; so there were many men who could comminate punishments, even the capital one, which was applied for crimes such as murder, theft, sacrilege and high treason, sometimes respecting the laws, but often in arbitrary way. It was applied through beheading, hanging, drowning and torture till death. There was a long time in the European history when death penalty was applied for delicts that are now considered of opinion. The fusion of politic and religious power caused for many centuries the condemnation of people who were against the Church ideas, in all ranges (political, scientific, etc.), and also there were many women condemned and burned, like witches. Over the centuries, death penalty was still in use in many countries and new death instruments were frequently added. For example, in the France of the Ancienne Regime it was executed in different and terrible ways according to the social class of the culprit and the committed crime: the hanging was for the countrymen, the beheading for the nobles, the wheel for the heaviest crimes, the stake for the religious crimes, the quartering for the crimes against the State. During the Revolution, on Guillotin's proposal, different penalties were abolished and guillotine was introduced for everyone. Death penalty remained in the largest part of legal systems until the end of XVIII century, when the attempts to oppose it started to be many and important. The most famous denunciation of the unfairness of death penalty comes from the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, who in his literary work Dei Delitti E Delle Pene (1764), sustaining its ineffectiveness as a prevention way for crimes and laying stress on the possibility of juridical errors, suggested its abolition; Beccaria's work obtained great attention also outside Italy and influenced in a decisive way the movements for the riformation of legal systems. One of the first examples of total abolition of death penalty is due to Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany, who eliminated it from the Tuscany Grand Duchy in 1786. From the XIX century, in many States, first in some western one, then in many others, death penalty was abolished, and it was substituted with other punishments like the life imprisonment. During this century it still was used by some dictatorial governments to get rid of the people who opposed them, for reasons of ideology or skin color, like in South Africa during the apartheid, in Russia in the time of Lenin and Stalin, in Europe in the time of the Nazism. In many states it's still in use, and the people, in the largest part of the cases, agree to this extreme penalty. In many countries, expecially the ones which have a dictatorial regime, death penalty is applied quite arbitrarily by the powerful ones, though there have been written laws since many centuries.