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The death penalty was mandatory (although it was frequently commuted by the government) until the Judgement of Death Act 1823 gave judges the official power to commute the death penalty except for treason and murder. The Punishment of Death, etc. Act 1832 reduced the number of capital crimes by two-thirds.
The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 [1] (c. 71) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished the death penalty for murder in Great Britain (the death penalty for murder survived in Northern Ireland until 1973). The act replaced the penalty of death with a mandatory sentence of imprisonment for life.
Gradually during the middle of the nineteenth century the number of capital offences was reduced, and by 1861 was down to five. The last execution in the UK took place in 1964, and the death penalty was legally abolished in the following years for the crimes of: Murder, 1969 in England, Wales and Scotland, and 1973 in Northern Ireland
When the French parliament overwhelmingly outlawed the death penalty in 1981, he put his hand on the plaque commemorating Victor Hugo’s seat, also a strident abolitionist, and said “It is done.”
Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane [206] and criticize it for its irreversibility. [207] They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, [208] [209] [210] or has a brutalization effect, [211] [212] discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". [213]
The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse. To be hanged, drawn and quartered was a method of torturous capital punishment used principally to execute men convicted of high treason in medieval and early modern Britain and Ireland.
The following are the five states with the most executions since the early 1980s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center: Texas, 591. Oklahoma, 126. Virginia, 113. Florida, 106.
The United Kingdom retained the death penalty for high treason until 1998; however, this technicality was superseded by the absolute ban on the death penalty in 1976. William Joyce was the last person to be put to death for high treason in the UK, on 3 January 1946 at Wandsworth Prison.