FunIn which countries does the death penalty exist? And...

In which countries does the death penalty exist? And for what crimes?

The death penalty is a criminal sanction that involves the murder of the offender. Today, in the world, more than two thirds of the countries have decided to abolish it by law or de facto. However, 55 countries still apply it. Let us know in which countries the death penalty still exists and which crimes are condemned in this way.

In which countries does the death penalty exist? And what crimes are convicted in this way?

The first actual written testimony on the use of the death penalty dates back to approximately 1700 BC. C. , when the Babylonian king Hammurabi had an important code drawn up. The corpus of laws thus elaborated was based on the famous law of retaliation: the penalty inflicted was decided on the basis of the injury suffered, according to the logic of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth .” Although it was a written code, and therefore in theory a guarantor of fairness of judgment, there was a severity of differentiated penalties depending on the social class to which both the offender and the victim belonged.

This distinction was not foreseen in Ancient Egypt , where the death penalty was used to punish those who attempted against the life of the pharaoh, but also all those who committed specific types of crimes, such as murder or robbery.

This punishment was also used in Ancient Greece and Rome . In particular, Roman society was distinguished by the vast catalog of ways in which executions were carried out.

In the Middle Ages, it was above all the Court of the Holy Inquisition that killed the so-called witches and sorcerers.

Countries that apply the death penalty

Taking into account the data that Amnesty International collects each year, 2020 saw a sharp decline in the number of executions, so much so that it was the lowest in the last decade. The countries in which this discipline still exists would be 55, among the most active China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and finally Egypt.

This is the full list:

  1. Afghanistan
  2. Old and bearded
  3. Saudi Arabia
  4. Bahamas
  5. Bahrain
  6. Bangladesh
  7. Barbados
  8. Belarus
  9. Belize
  10. Botswana
  11. China
  12. Comoros
  13. North Korea
  14. Cuba
  15. Dominica
  16. Egypt
  17. United Arab Emirates
  18. USA
  19. Ethiopia
  20. Gambia
  21. Equatorial Guinea
  22. Guyana
  23. India
  24. Indonesia
  25. Iraq
  26. Iran
  27. Jamaica
  28. Japan
  29. Jordan
  30. Kuwait
  31. Lesotho
  32. Lebanon
  33. Libya
  34. Malaysia
  35. Nigeria
  36. Oman
  37. Uganda
  38. Pakistan
  39. State of Palestine
  40. Qatar
  41. Democratic Republic of Congo
  42. St. Lucia
  43. Saint Kitts and Nevis
  44. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
  45. Singapore
  46. Somalia
  47. Sudan
  48. South Sudan
  49. Syria
  50. Taiwan
  51. Thailand
  52. Trinidad and Tobago
  53. Vietnam
  54. Yemen
  55. Zimbabwe

In some countries it is foreseen for crimes such as murder and high treason, in others it also applies to crimes such as robbery, rape, drug trafficking; in others, it even applies to crimes of opinion, such as apostasy, or for being accused of homosexuality .

Often, in the common imagination, the first country to think of in reference to the death penalty is the United States. However, this is a particularly controversial issue as individual states handle the problem independently; In any case, in 2020 the death penalty is still allowed in 28 of them . However, at the federal level, the decision to resume executions in July 2020 during the Trump administration, after 17 years of unwritten moratorium, sparked much discussion.

As for China, it is interesting to report what was discovered by »Hands Off Cain», an Italian NGO that deals with these issues, which reported how this method is also used with respect to those who intentionally hide or incorrectly report symptoms related to the Coronavirus. However, to date, there is no reliable data on the actual number of executions carried out in China as this information is classified as a state secret.

How is execution by death penalty

But how are these executions carried out? In the United States today the death penalty is often carried out by lethal injection , although the use of the electric chair still exists in some states, for example in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia, to name a few. The gas chamber and the shooting are also planned in the United States.

It is necessary to remember that there is still a fairly heterogeneous discipline on the subject, which varies from state to state: for example in Iraq in 2020 there were several executions by hanging, just as in Belarus a shot to the head was used.

The abolition of the death penalty

To date, 106 countries have abolished the death penalty from their legal system for any crime , in addition to 8 that have abolished it for ordinary crimes and 28 de facto. Although 55 countries still have the death penalty in force, death sentences have been drastically reduced in recent years.

The reasons that justify the abolition of such a cruel sanction seem manifold. In the first place, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as other regional and international treaties recognize the “right to life”, which would be in contrast to the possibility of “Premeditated assassination by the state”.

Furthermore, no study has actually shown that the death penalty involves a greater deterrent than the others and, particularly within our legal system, this view appears in stark contrast to the reeducational-resocializing purpose with which the penalty is defined.

Finally, the risk of executing an innocent person is inherent in the death penalty itself. From 1973 to today, according to Amnesty International, 167 people have been released in the United States after new evidence of their innocence emerged. The common thread in all these cases seems to be the presence of a series of flaws in the system, in particular the lack of precision in the investigations, the inadequacy of legal assistance and the use of unreliable witnesses. Furthermore, still in the United States, there have been cases of prisoners sentenced to death despite numerous doubts about their actual guilt.

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