Debates about the relevance and necessity of Capital punishment has been a ‘hot’ topic in the country for a long time what with the August 2004 execution of Dhananjay Chatterjee, on the counts of rape and murder and the recent May 6thdeath penalty announced for Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist from the 26/11 terror strikes. Found guilty of numerous charges he was sentenced to death on 4 counts. This makes him the 52nd person on death row in India. Kasab was handed capital punishment for killing 72 people and waging war against the state.
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by trial as a punishment for an offence. Crimes resulting in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. While capital punishment has in the past, been practiced by most societies, it is, today, a controversial issue in various countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region.
The UN General Assembly has adopted, in 2007 and 2008, non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventually abolish capital punishment. Although many nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population lives in countries where executions take place. In fact, China, India, United States of America and Indonesia-the four most populous countries in the world, apply the death penalty (although in India and Indonesia it is used only rarely). Each of these four nations voted against the General Assembly resolutions.Currently only 58 nations actively practice it, while 96 countries have abolished the practice
The crimes that merit capital punishment vary with the countries as well. While used by almost all societies to execute criminals and political opponents, to punish crime and suppress political rebellion, in most places it is reserved for grave crimes like murder, treason and espionage or as part of military justice. In some other countries, sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery, incest and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy(the formal renunciation of the state religion) in Islamic nations. Even drug trafficking is considered a capital offense. . In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty.
Similarly, in medieval and early modern Europe, before the development of modern prison systems, the death penalty was also used as a generalized form of punishment.By 1820 in Britain, there were 160 crimes that were punishable by death, including crimes such as shoplifting, petty theft, stealing cattle or cutting down trees in public place.
The last several centuries, however, has seen the emergence of modern nation-states. Almost fundamental to the concept of nation state is the idea of citizenship. This caused justice to be increasingly associated with equality and universality, which in Europe saw an emergence of the concept of natural rights. The death penalty was seenas an increasingly unnecessary deterrent in prevention of minor crimes such as theft.In countries like Britain, law enforcement officials became alarmed when juries tended to acquit non-violent felons rather than risk a conviction that could result in execution.
Gradually, since World War II there has been a trend toward abolishing the death penalty. Trends in most of the world have long been to move to less painful, or more humane, executions. France developed the guillotine for this reason in the final years of the 18th century. Hanging by turning the victim off a ladder or by kicking a stool or a bucket, which causes death by suffocation, was replaced by long drop "hanging" where the subject is dropped a longer distance to dislocate the neck and sever the spinal cord. Shah of Persia introduced- throat-cutting and blowing from a gun, as quick and painless alternatives, to more tormentous methods of executions, used at that time. In the U.S., the electric chair and the gas chamber were introduced as more humane alternatives to hanging, but have been almost entirely superseded by lethal injection, which in turn has been criticized as being too painful. Nevertheless, some countries still employ slow hanging methods, beheading by sword and even stoning, although the latter is rarely employed.
In a nutshell, past methods included Boiling, Burning, Crucifixion, Crushing, Disembowelment,and Execution by elephantwhile the current methods include Decapitation, Electrocution, Gas chamber, Hanging, Lethal injection,shooting (Firing squad), Stoning.
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