CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

execution of a criminal convicted of a crime. Capital punishment was once meted out for a large number of crimes. In England, for example, during the 18th century, death was decreed for several hundred specific offenses, particularly for those against property. During that century, however, limitations began to be placed on the number and type of offenses for which criminals were put to death. The writings of 18th-century Enlightenment thinkerssuch as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Cesare Beccariaproved a powerful stimulus to reform, as did the rise of the industrial working class and the humanitarian movements. By the 1970s death had been eliminated as a statutory punishment in many countries, including Portugal, Denmark, Venezuela, Austria, Brazil, Switzerland, and Great Britain (except for treason and piracy). In some other countries it was seldom or never invoked. In the United States, there are death penalty statutes in some states but not in others. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment laws, as then enforced, were unconstitutional. A later Supreme Court ruling, however, upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment per se, and many states have since passed laws that meet the court's requirements of specifying the crimes or circumstances for which the death penalty is to be invoked. Those persons favouring capital punishment maintain that it deters people from committing crime; life imprisonment, it is said, would not be equally effective as a deterrent and would expose prison staffs and fellow prisoners to dangerous murderers. This risk later extends to the community, as such persons may escape or be pardoned or paroled. Opponents of capital punishment maintain that it cannot be proved to be a better deterrent or to protect the community better than does life imprisonment; that errors of justice sometimes lead to the execution of innocent persons; and that the death penalty is applied unequally, mostly to the poor and the defenseless, who cannot afford lawyers or appeals.