The death penalty as an extreme measure of punishment of prisoners

To the death penalty for a long time began to concern skeptically. Sentenced to her at different times for completely different offenses, only in the last years of her use - for particularly serious crimes, for illegally causing repeated deaths to other people, and only in the most exceptional cases. In most cases, the verdict in court was tried to change for life or long-term imprisonment, or the sentenced person 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 realistically. But it still could not be canceled until now.

What is the death penalty?

Let us consider this in more detail. The higher penalty appeared before the criminal law was invented. It was used quite often for serious crimes literally all over the world. The death penalty is an extreme penalty because it deprived the person sentenced to her, the most valuable thing he had, that is, his life, his existence among people. In each country, it is expressed in different ways. In Russia in the last years of its use, the death penalty was expressed in the form of the execution of a convict, but before Russia was proclaimed the Russian Federation, many sovereigns often used a wide variety of executions. In other civilized countries, it was more developed (if one can call it so) and manifested itself in stoning, hanging, burning at a stake, electric stool, gas poisoning, shooting, wheeling, quartering.

How was the death penalty imposed?

When a person is tried for a particularly serious crime or several of them, then, as a rule, other, milder forms of punishment are considered, and if the court could not choose another measure in connection with the severity of the acts committed, the trial recognizes the right On the use of the death penalty in relation to the prisoner. A verdict is issued, which is not enforced in almost all countries. In cases where there is a capital punishment, the court verdict, after its entry into legal 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 Presidential Commission on pardon. And only in the event that none of the above-mentioned organizations protests this sentence, then the death penalty will be held.

Types of execution - what are they?

Most types of executions were invented independently by the harsh "fathers" of our state. For example, Ivan the Terrible was still an experimenter in this field. Only during his reign, more than a thousand people were executed, and rarely the methods were repeated. Someone the king ordered to hang, another to put on the stomach a cage without a bottom, in which there was a hungry rat, she gradually devoured from the criminal organ after organ, while he did not die. Some were buried alive, others were tied to a pillar and each of the king's court in turn had to cut out a piece of meat, and so carefully that the guilty as long as possible was tormented. Substitute the tube to the belly of the condemned with the rat inside, the other side of which was closed by a grate and set on fire. The rat, afraid of merciless fire, gnawed its way out through the insides of man. Witches and sorcerers were burned. Stoked for a variety of even the most stupid offenses, and did not spare even the elderly and children! Filled the throat with red-hot metal (usually counterfeiters). Such terrible reprisals against prisoners can be enumerated to infinity. The imagination of our predecessors worked perfectly. But are these people really so guilty before the rest of the people?

The supreme measure of restraint in the USSR

The death penalty in the USSR has already acquired a certain form - shooting, hanging less often. And it was usually used only in times of warrior and political repression by such famous leaders as Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich, Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich. And when Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich came to power, he literally immediately imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, after which it virtually ceased to be applied.