Capital Punishment in your nation

[La Cosa Fedora]

In theory we have the death penalty for only the most heinous of crimes, such as murder, mass-murder, rape, etc. Generous rights for the accused are guaranteed in our constitution, and death penalty cases are reviewed several times before anyone can be executed.

In practice, La Cosa Fedora does not need leave from the courts of the League of the Six Free Peoples to act. Those who threaten our political or economic system can often end up in fatal accidents or just plain old killed for their words or deeds. The police always rules these cases as accident or suicide, but interested parties know why these people die, and they learn the lesson that if one wishes to preserve good health, one is not to rock the boat.

Most such death penalty is applied for political cases, but sometimes La Cosa Fedora intervenes in the criminal justice system to pursue its own interests or to be seen as the swift and unerring alternative to the clogged up state court system.

[East Jordan]

If you kill a criminal, you're worse than he is.

Naivete on this scale is only charming in children, and then only very young ones. In adults, it's downright inexcusable. Your stance is horribly flawed in that it fails to take into account morality, impetus, and intent, merely labeling all killing as bad by default. By this logic, the woman who shoots and kills her would-be rapist is just as bad as the man who intended to force himself on an innocent woman, and then likely slit her throat, beat her to death, strangle her, or otherwise kill her in some horrible way.

The two are in no way morally equivalent, but in your warped worldview, they are.

In the Federal Republic, we most certainly do practice capital punishment to remove the worst of criminal refuse from our streets. Murderers, rapists (especially child rapists), and so forth are all killed in this country, usually by hanging unless hanging is impossible, in which case a firing squad is the normal alternative.

[Invadia-Rex]

the death penalty is applicable on the first offence under the following offences:

Murder
Treason
Inciting a riot
promoting secession
Denying the divinity of the High-Emperor on any form of public mass media
Desecrating the nation's flag or a portrait of the High-Emperor
Promoting any religion other than the Imperial Cult on any form of public mass media
Organizing a mass protest
Being the leader of a gang
Dodging the draft
Encouraging others to dodge draft


The death penalty is applicable on the second offence under the following offences:

The growing, distribution, consumption, or transportation of any and all illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, LSD, morphine, heroin, and methamphetamine.
Being the owner of an illegal business
Promoting life in other countries
Glorifying foreign governments
Promoting other religions other than the Imperial Cult in any capacity
Prostitution or pimping (capital punishment eligible; not directly stated as the punishment)
Denying the divinity of the High-Emperor in any capacity
Non-compliance with the authorities
Vandalizing government buildings
The creation and distribution of alcohol and alcoholic beverages; beer, lager, and wine.
The consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages; beer, lager, and wine.


The death penalty is applicable on the third offence under the following offences:

Criticizing government policy
Helping illegal immigrants into the empire
Aiding in the escape of citizens fleeing the empire
The production, distribution, and any involvement with pornography or material that has pornographic content
Speeding
Displaying any other country's flag other than the Imperial flag beyond the venues of international events within the empire.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

Used to punish traitors to the United Colonies of Earth, and enemies of Humanity.

[Zanazbar]

.

[Vallermoore]

Used for mass murder, murder, paedophilia, rape and treason. Noone has been executed for treason in centuries and 90% of the rapists of adults who are executed are either black people or are convicts serving long sentences.

[Hansdeltania]

There is a controversial bill that has been introduced to the Federal United Congress of Hansdeltanian States by the Nationalist and some of the Conright Party that calls for the public execution by rifleman for all felonies and hate-motivated crimes (against transgenders and/or non-heterosexuals excluded; actions forcing someone to commit suicide is one).

[Philippinae]

Listed below are crimes punishable by death in Philippinae.

1. Treason
2. Spying for the Chinese government
3. Harboring Chinese spies
4. Terrorism
5. Murder
6. Distributing pro-Chinese propaganda
7. Operating a Chinese language school
8. Armed robbery with or without murder
9. Burglary
10. Selling adulterated goods
11. Attempted assassination of the Supreme Overlord
12. Armed rebellion
13. Kidnapping
14. Operating an organized crime group
15. Hijacking
16. Piracy

Executions are performed in public both for deterrence and entertainment purposes. Methods usually involve torture and is usually designed to maximize the suffering of the condemned. Below is the list of state approved execution methods being used by this country.

1. Brazen bull
2. Castration and crucifixion
3. Hanged, drawn and quartered
4. Scaphism
5. Drowning in liquid feces
6. Slow dismemberment
7. Torture by fire ants and other insects
8. Burning at the stake
9. Crushing by elephant
10. Immersion in piranha-infested pool
11. Slow immersion in lava or molten iron
12. Slow disembowelment
13. Death by gamma irradiation
14. Fed to hungry lions
15. ...And many other cruel and torturous punishments.

[Brznovia]

The Republic of Brznovia has no death penalty. It was abolished in the constitution drawn up at the conclusion of the civil war in 1993. The Brznovian criminal justice system focuses on rehabilitation of offenders into society; those who cannot be rehabilitated are permanently incarcerated to prevent them from becoming a danger to the wider society.

[Skyhooked]

We execute criminals only for the most severe crimes, like terrorism, cruel rape, and mass murder. And only when their guilt is 100% proven. Such criminal have two choices, they can be shot, or they can fight eachother in the arena. The winner gets life imprisonment with a small chance of parole after 25-30 years instead. Loser... an honorable death.

[Syadei]

Capital Punishment has never been used in Syadei.

[The Arthurian Isles]

---

The death penalty is constitutionally forbidden in the Arthurian Federation and has been since the first iteration of the Basic Law entered into force in 954 A.R. (1864 AD). Article 2 of that Basic Law stipulates that "every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable". Following the accession of the Basic Law, the cantonal government of Æsland attempted to execute an offender as had been permitted by their cantonal constitutional document. The Federal Constitutional Court, accepting the case from the Federal Government, ruled against Æsland's government. Their decision argued from Article 2, Article 21 (Paragraphs 1 and 2), Article 26, Article 29 (Paragraphs 4 and 5), Article 30 and Article 35 of the Basic Law that Æsland had no grounds to defy the federal constitutional order. The affair became known as the Stensen Controversy after Æsland's then-President-Logmaður, Abyes Stensen, who was a vocal critic of the federal system. It led to his administration's downfall and was the last attempt by any Arthurian authority to implement the death penalty. Since that time the Arthurian Federation has become an active campaigner for the abolition of capital punishment around the world.

Immediately prior to the abolition of the death penalty in Arthuria there was little appetite for its continuation. Public executions had ceased to be practised for at least half a century in the cantons because of the hooliganism and rioting they tended to cause, and by the accession of the Basic Law only three of the then-thirteen cantons still executed prisoners at all. Further laws, enacted after the accession of the Federal Basic Law, instead set the maximum continuous prison sentence permissible at thirty years. The sentencing limit applies to single sentencings as well as combined prison terms. Because this was legally a cantonal responsibility, it was implemented sporadically across the Federation and over a time period of nearly 150 years. All sixteen of the modern Arthurian cantons finally achieved harmony over this law by 1041 A.R. (1951 AD).

The above describes the historical process of abolition in Arthuria. It does not explain the campaign's early effect in the country though. To do so, the philosophy of Arthurian jurisprudence must be examined.

By the 9th century A.R. (18th century AD) the Arthurian Federation was undergoing an intellectual enlightenment thanks to the arrival of foreign merchants and travellers from across Noctur. The ideas which they introduced to the country caught the imagination of a people who had heretofore been confined to one traditional philosophical approach. The birth of the publishing industry in Arthuria contributed to the spread of modern ideas which reached its peak with the arrival of a philosophy known as utilitarianism. Other factors affected this particular philosophy's popularity in the late 9th century and early 10th century A.R. (late 18th and early 19th centuries AD). One of these factors was the drive amongst liberal politicians to centralise the confederal institutions of the Isles into one powerful federal government. They sought to design this government around rational constructs and principles of fairness built up from a perceived tabula rasa. Ultimately this would lead to Arthuria's brief civil war from which the liberals would emerge victorious, but prior to such events the effect of their writings was to spread an awareness of progressive causes amongst the population.

One such progressive cause was abolitionism (referring to the death penalty, for slavery had never existed in the isolated and homogenous Arthurian Isles). Law, abolitionism argued, was to have one end only: to augment the happiness of the Arthurian people as both individuals and a collective society. Punishment, which formed one of the means of justice, was to be used only to control the actions of those to have diminished that happiness. The act of punishing an individual, no matter its consequences, was still an unhappiness which deprived a degree of happiness from the overall Arthurian community; if it was to be used to augment aggregate happiness then it would need to be applied efficiently. In short, a punishment must achieve the maximum social good by applying the minimum of harm. With this basic principle of crime and punishment established it was a small step for an already compassionate population to factor into punishment the wellbeing of the criminal. The approach did not end capital punishment at once, for even with an offender's wellbeing accounted for there were still arguments in favour of the death penalty.

Anti-abolitionists argued around four basic points:

• Firstly they contested that the death penalty could be a proportional punishment to the crime committed if it were applied only in cases of intentional murder. This was a stirring point for many, but the success of the abolitionists was that they were able to redefine government's role in the justice system as being one of rehabilitation and deterrence; they were not in the business of retribution. The death penalty, they countered, would categorically prevent any form of rehabilitation. Against capital punishment's deterrent effect, they argued that jail was equally as dissuasive and took into account the wellbeing of the offender. By the time of the abolition of the death penalty, the Federal Government's self-perception was in line with the liberals' assessment; it was willing to dedicate more resources to rehabilitation in order not to lose a far more valuable asset: its identity as the protector of all Arthurian people.
  
  Logically, too, the abolitionists were able to undermine the argument from proportionality. It was not so much an argument in favour of capital punishment as an explanation for the death penalty's popularity. This led directly to the anti-abolitionists' next argument.

• Second, the anti-abolitionists tried to argue that capital punishment was popular amongst the Arthurian people. This had already been refuted by the original utilitarian doctrine: the loss of happiness from the execution of an offender would be invariably greater than the happiness achieved by appeasing the public on an issue that did not directly affect them. Whether or not the maths behind this argument could be proved was not of much concern because by the time that this debate was being had, the death penalty's popularity was plummeting. If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, then capital punishment was never overwhelmingly supported prior to the debate over its legality.

• Third, the anti-abolitionists argued that capital punishment was exemplary by the lasting impression it had on those who witnessed it. This was not true, as the liberals tried to prove. What caused crime, they countered, was conditions of poverty and desperation - were one desperate enough to commit a crime punishable by death then they would have already made the calculation that their life was worth losing in order to achieve the fruits of that crime. Those that murdered out of rage, on the other hand, were animated by animal spirits; they did not make a cost-benefit calculation and so no deterrent could be expected to work against them. The very worst of murderers - serial killers - did not even expect to be caught, making the very idea of punishment redundant when applied to them. However little proof the abolitionists could find to support these arguments at the time, they were enough to win the support of much of the population.

• Finally, the anti-abolitionists claimed that capital punishment was the most efficient form of punishment; it eliminated any potential for further crime from the same source: the executed criminal. Against this defence the abolitionists simply said that the cost of that efficiency was too great. The loss of self-identity as protectors of the people, the loss of a human life, the loss of that person's future rehabilitation, all would overcome the benefits of the criminal's death. On a simple mathematical basis, capital punishment may end the diminishment of the aggregate happiness by an individual, but it will never actively augment the overall happiness as rehabilitation can do, nor will it prevent the government's actions from acting as a detractor from that happiness.

The abolitionists' arguments can be reduced to the following four points which had varying effects on the Arthurian population and intellectual circles:

• First, capital punishment is unprofitable; a dead criminal is unable to provide compensation, either directly or through rehabilitative service to society. In modern times this argument has been debunked by the rising costs of imprisonment, but at the time of the original debate it was a fair point which supported with reason the emotional abhorrence many people held for the death penalty.

• Second, capital punishment does not provide a commensurate level of happiness to the general population as compared to the pain suffered by the criminal.

• Third, capital punishment is not variable; it cannot be amended according to the severity or reaction to the crime. For one criminal the death penalty may seem like a terrible cost to pay for their crime; for the next, it may be an acceptable risk to take in order to improve their desperate situation in life. The prospect of death has a differential impact on the behaviour of different criminals.

• Finally, the incorrect application of the death penalty cannot be put right. To a population which believed strongly in humanity's fallibility and inherent innocence, this was a particularly powerful argument.

The above debate did not provide a perfect answer. There are flaws and inconsistencies in each of the arguments. What made the abolitionist argument so effective was that it provided a rational justification for the emotions which many Arthurians held. By virtue of traditional philosophies and religion the population was naturally averse to the death penalty. The lack of logical argument had prevented it from being refuted, however. All that the abolitionists had to achieve was to bring the debate to the centre of public discourse. The mere fact that they used reason was enough to secure victory.

Since their success there has been no strong desire in Arthuria to undo the works of the abolitionist cause.

[Zimbezia]

Zimbezia technically has a death penalty (for treason and first degree murder), but no one has ever been sentenced to death in the country's entire history.

[Yannia]

Yannia still has the death penalty in the books for treason and for desertion. Desertion is punishable by firing squad, treason by public flogging. However, there has been no execution in over a century, and abolishment is being debated.

[Fatatatutti]

If you kill a criminal, you're worse than he is.

By this logic, the woman who shoots and kills her would-be rapist is just as bad as the man who intended to force himself on an innocent woman, and then likely slit her throat, beat her to death, strangle her, or otherwise kill her in some horrible way.

No. That is not the logic at all.

The question is about state-sponsored capital punishment, not self-defence or personal retriution. The answer, then, is about state-sponsored capital punishment, not self-defence or personal retribution. The proper scenario would involve the state ritually killing the "would-be" rapist after he was already at their mercy and no longer a danger to anybody.

You can not demonstate that killing people is bad by killing people - any more than you can demonstrate that rape is bad by raping people.

[Ben from Tallahassee]

The death penalty is used for approximately 25,657 crimes.

[Alinghi Federal-Democratic Republic]

Aboished with the democratic revolution and the estabilishment of the repubic, and we abolished also the life imprisonment a year ago (one month in real life) the max is 25 years of imprisonment

[East Jordan]

The question is about state-sponsored capital punishment, not self-defence or personal retriution. The answer, then, is about state-sponsored capital punishment, not self-defence or personal retribution. The proper scenario would involve the state ritually killing the "would-be" rapist after he was already at their mercy and no longer a danger to anybody.

The practice of capital punishment by the state, which represents the people, is simply the principle of individual self-defense on a grand scale. He who would rape or murder is a risk as long as he lives, and so removing him is removing a threat to the community.

The intent here is not to "demonstrate" anything. It is to eliminate a grave threat to the community as a whole. Sometimes, bad people have to die for the rest of us to be safe.

[Fatatatutti]

The intent here is not to "demonstrate" anything. It is to eliminate a grave threat to the community as a whole.

Nonsense. You can protect the community without killing people.

[East Jordan]

Nonsense. You can protect the community without killing people.

Not always, and to believe otherwise is to ignore history because it does not match what you want to be true. Some threats must be removed permanently. As long as a murderer or a rapist lives, he is an imminent threat to everybody else in the community. His death removes that threat without any chance of it coming back.

It is not an especially pleasant necessity, but it is a necessity.

[Fatatatutti]

... to believe otherwise is to ignore history because it does not match what you want to be true.

On the contrary, history shows that capital punishment does not result in lower crime rates. It just cheapens life.

It is not an especially pleasant necessity, but it is a necessity.

It is certainly not a "necessity", since most civilized nations have abolished it.

[Shyubi Koku Naishifun]

Capital punishment is present and enforced by the government in Shyubi Koku Naishifun technically but rarely imposed on Shyubi citizens. Only a microscopic fraction of crimes end with death penalty and it is only imposed on the unimaginably most heinous, horrendous and severe of crimes committed by Shyubi citizens or rather, to non-Shyubi criminals. Most felony crimes committed by foreigners and non-Shyubi in the country end with the death penalty.

[Actilla]

Mass murder, terrorism, and rape all carry a possible death sentence of hanging.

[Donraairufutiyubi]

The death penalty was officially abolished in 2005.

[Nortainland]

The Home Office

Capital punishment is an authorised sentence for extraordinary crimes. These include:

Murder
Violent piracy
Drug trafficking
Mutiny
Sabotage with the intent to kill
Arson in a hospital
Destruction of a cathedral
Treason
Trespass in the Royal Forests
Treachery
Unnatural carnal knowledge
Infanticide
Espionage
Rape of a child under the age of five

Most are obsolete crimes, such as arson in a hospital or trespass in the Royal Forests, which have not been convicted since the 18th century. There are around 40 executions a year, although recently there has been a decline to around 32, which occur on the half-quarter days of Candlemas, May Day, Lammas and All Hallows at Newhorp Gaol. These executions are mostly public and are executed through the method of hanging. 75% of hangings are a result of murder, and the rest usually drug trafficking, unnatural carnal knowledge or rape.