They have long been skeptical of the death penalty. They were sentenced to her at different times for completely different misconducts, only in the last years of her use - for especially grave crimes, for illegally repeatedly causing death to other people, and only in the most exceptional cases. In most cases, the court tried to change the sentence to life or long-term imprisonment, or the sentenced could be pardoned by a senior official, for example, the president. Few people know, but in Russia the death penalty only in 1999 ceased to be used really. But they have not been able to cancel it to date.
What is the death penalty?
Consider this in more detail. Capital punishment appeared even before they came up with criminal law. It was used quite often for serious crimes literally around the world. The death penalty is an extreme punishment, since it deprived the person sentenced to her of the most valuable that he had, that is, life, his existence among people. In each country, it is expressed differently. In Russia in recent years of its use, the death penalty was expressed as the execution of a convict, but before our country was proclaimed by the Russian Federation, many sovereigns quite often used the most diverse types of executions. In other civilized countries, it was more developed (if you can call it that) and was manifested in stoning, hanging, burning at a stake, electric chair, gas poisoning, execution, wheeling, and quartering.
How was the death penalty imposed?
When a person is tried for a particularly serious crime or several, then, as a rule, other, milder forms of punishment are considered first , and if the court could not choose another measure in connection with the gravity of the committed acts, then the right is recognized during the trial on the use of the death penalty against a prisoner. A sentence is passed, which in almost all countries does not come into force immediately. In cases where there is a capital punishment, the court sentence, after its entry into force, is checked by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, then it is considered by the Commission of the President of the Russian Federation on pardon. And only if none of the above organizations protests this sentence, then the death penalty will take place.
Types of execution - what are they like?
Most types of executions were invented by the harsh "fathers" of our state. For example, Ivan the Terrible was still some kind of experimenter in this field. Only during his reign more than a thousand people were executed, and the methods were rarely repeated. The king ordered someone to hang someone, to put another cage on the stomach without a bottom, in which there was a hungry rat, she gradually ate organ after organ from the criminal until he died. Some were buried alive, others were tied to a pillar, and each of the king’s courtiers in turn had to cut out a piece of meat, and so carefully so that the guilty would suffer as long as possible. They put a pipe to the belly of the condemned with a rat inside, the other side of which was closed with a grill and set on fire. The rat, fearing merciless fire, gnawed its way out through the insides of man. Witches and sorcerers were burned. Drowned for various, even the most stupid misconduct, and did not spare even the elderly and children! They filled the throat with hot metal (usually counterfeiters). Such terrible reprisals against prisoners can be listed indefinitely. The imagination of our predecessors worked perfectly. But are those people really so guilty of the rest of the people?
The highest preventive measure in the USSR
The death penalty in the USSR has already acquired a certain form - execution, less often hanging. And it was usually used only during the warrior and political repressions by such famous leaders as Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich, Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich. And when Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin came to power, he literally immediately introduced a moratorium on the death penalty, after which it actually ceased to apply.