User talk:Caravaca/CP

Lazy Test Page for History of Capital Punishment
The use of formal execution extends back beyond recorded history. In the history of the death penalty, societies have generally progressed (or sometimes regressed) through an identifiable sequence of practices surrounding the death penalty. All of these phases can still be found in some parts of the world today, although the tendency is towards abolition. Parallel with this progression towards abolition, societies have also experienced developments in concern with the suffering associated with the death penalty. Earlier phases show attempts to maximize suffering. Intermediate phases show attempts to differentiate (maximizing in some cases, minimizing in others): the degree of suffering may have some relation to the person's status in society or the nature of the crime. In later phases, any extraneous (or "cruel and unusual") suffering is considered unethical and execution must be as "humane" as possible. The issues of human sacrifice and entertainment are also important in the history of capital punishment.
 * Tribal practices or blood feuds.
 * Introduction of state-sponsored justice, with use of the death penalty for many crimes.
 * The lex talionis, restricting the death penalty to murder.
 * Abolitionary movements.

Blood feuds
The historical origin of the death penalty lies in the practice of the blood feud. Blood feuds (or vendettas) are a form of social control in societies where the state is too weak or underdeveloped to enforce law, or where the state does not exist at all. Responsibility for law enforcement falls to the individual members of society, who may be entitled by tradition to kill those who have threatened the honour of their families. Honour can be threatened by many transgressions (e.g. land disputes). Blood feuds are not an unregulated practice. On the contrary, the traditional rules surrounding blood feuds (such as a code of honour) may be elaborate and rigidly observed. "...revenge can be characterised as a mechanism for social control and maintenance of a balance of power between medium-sized groups which are not subject to any higher central authority. The lack of a guarantor of order and security means that these groups can only ensure long-lasting coexistence by means of an "equilibrium of fear". Acts of revenge underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies (as well as potential allies) that injury to property, rights or the person will not go unpunished."

A blood feud may seem primitive and uncivilised by modern standards, but it should be seen as progress compared to the alternatives available in early societies: "Blood feud makes a society safer than it would be if there was no regulation of violence and its use against others." However if disagreement about application of the rules of honour arises, the two sides may get involved in an unending cycle of violence: the "equilibrium of fear" is unstable. Societies have tended to progress away from the state of blood feud if they can.

Key elaborations of the blood feud cultures include the principle of substitution. Just as one life had to be paid for with another in revenge, so one life could be substituted for another in the payment of the blood debt. Blood feud systems include elaborate rules for negotiation and settlement, although the parties might not be willing to settle. Settlement rules can allow for animal blood to replace human blood, or transfers of property or blood money. Blood feuds could be regulated at meetings, such as Viking things. Systems deriving from blood feuds may survive alongside more advanced legal systems or be given recognition by courts (e.g. trial by combat). One of the more modern refinements of the blood feud is the duel.

Sacrifice and entertainment

 * "All of the people of Gaul are completely devoted to religion, and for this reason those who are greatly affected by diseases and in the dangers of battle either sacrifice human victims or vow to do so using the Druids as administrators to these sacrifices, since it is judged that unless a man's life is given back, the will of the immortal gods cannot be placated." (Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, Book VI)

Human sacrifice is well documented from the earliest times, but what was the rationale? According to Caesar, for the Celts it was "pro vita hominis nisi hominis vita reddatur" - roughly, "a life for a life". If the gods are displeased with you for a wrongdoing, they demand blood payment and may send a disease to perform the execution. However it is possible to negotiate with the gods and perform a substitution - somebody else's life will pay the blood debt instead. Similarly, there is a risk when going into battle that one might have some unpaid blood debt with the gods, for which reason the gods might ensure defeat and death. So as a safety precaution it was possible to promise the gods an alternative blood payment - presumably the blood of one's enemies, but again as a substitution for one's own blood. See also: Celts and human sacrifice.



In Christian theology the doctrine of substitutionary atonement has a similar logic, but extended to a universal scale. The idea of substitutionary atonement is that humanity (from the dawn of time to the end of time) is sinful and that these sins or wrongdoings require compensation or atonement. The Roman execution of Jesus of Nazareth is interpreted as a self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity. The key biblical texts indicate the idea of one life for many lives. As regards the substitution, Christian theology draws parallels between the crucifixion and the story of how Abraham was permitted to substitute a lamb for his son Isaac when commanded by God to make a human sacrifice (the lamb is understood as symbolizing Christ). See also: atonement, substitutionary atonement, propitiation, sacrifice.



Further examples of human sacrifice include the judicial hanging that was originally a sacrificial rite to Odin. Scandinavian religions demanded human sacrifices not only by hanging, but also by drowning the convict in a bog (see Kalevala which contains a chapter where Väinämöinen sentences the fatherless Son of Marjatta to be drowned in a bog; see also bog body, describing the archaeological finds of human sacrifices across Northern Europe). Some societies, such as the Aztec, used mass executions of prisoners of war as a religious rite. The perceived religious or instructive purpose of execution meant that many of the oldest methods of execution were intentionally brutal.

In many cultures the entertainment value of suffering was valued, as seen in Roman executions.

Public executions were the norm until recently, whether atop an Aztec pyramid or on a gallows in the town square. Public executions still occured in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century and continue to occur in other countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. Public execution can be justified on the grounds that it is important that justice, expecially for the most heinous crimes, is seen to be done. An alternative justification is that the deterrent effect is greater if execution is in public. In practice, public executions have often better served the purposes of entertainment. The practice in some countries of selecting a small group of witnesses, usually including officials and family members of victims, can be seen as a compromise between a public interest in witnessing justice and the avoidance of descending into entertainment.

State-sponsored justice

 * In 1593 some poor women from Nithsdale travelled up to Edinburgh with the bloody shirts of their husbands, sons and servants who had been slain in a raid by the Johnstones. Carrying these gory objects, they paraded through the burgh exposing the king’s inadequacy in providing protection or justice.

Societies have both progressed and regressed between blood feud and state-sponsored justice in the course of history. Recent studies, for example, have focussed strongly on the current regression into blood-feuding (kanun) in Albania. Detailed statistics measuring the impact of the regression have been published. As the above description of 16th C. Scotland shows, state intervention and regulation is desirable to end the cycle of excessive retaliations often associated with feuding.

The initial response of the state has often been to legislate the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes, and provide appropriate courts. The Pentateuch (Old Testament) lays down the death penalty for kidnapping, magic, violation of Sabbath, blasphemy and a wide range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were rare. A further example comes from Ancient Greece, where the Athenian legal system was first written down by Draco in about 621 BC: the death penalty was applied for a particularly wide range of crimes. The word draconian derives from Draco's laws. In medieval and early modern Europe, the death penalty was also used as a generalised form of punishment. For example, in 18th C. Britain there were 222 crimes which were punishable by death, including crimes such as cutting down a tree or stealing an animal.

Again, the range of often minor crimes to which the death penalty could be applied is almost universally regarded as unacceptable today. But it must be understood as an improvement on the blood feud. State-sponsored justice ensures that at most only one person (the actual perpetrator) is executed and that the matter ends there. Feuding sends whole families into hiding and impoverishment, with potentially several generations of killing.