The death penalty is the most severe penalty in criminal law. Execution is carried out only for particularly serious crimes.
In many countries around the world, legal scholars and legislators have abandoned the use of this type of criminal liability due to violations of the principles of humanism.
The death penalty in Russia is reflected in the Constitution of the Russian Federation as a type of punishment, but cannot be applied on the basis of prohibiting legal acts.
There is a moratorium on executions, but it can be lifted at any time.
History of the death penalty in Russia
Throughout the history of the country, the death penalty has been abolished and then returned. These changes were due to changes in government, political system, international trends in criminal law, etc.
Each innovation was necessarily formalized in the form of a specially issued legislative act. Options for the death penalty also varied significantly.
Ancient Rus'
In Ancient Rus', execution was used as an option for carrying out blood feud. Execution received its first legislative recognition in Russian Pravda in the 11th century.
It extended to criminals who committed robbery . Later, a ban on the use of blood feud appeared in Russian Pravda, but in practice it continued to exist.
The Dvina charter provided for the death penalty not for murder, but for theft committed for the third time . Later, treason, slander, state and religious crimes were added to the list of crimes.
Reign of Ivan IV
Ivan the Terrible, adopted during his reign by the Code of Laws in 1550, expanded the use of the death penalty . Execution became one of the most common types of punishment, carried out publicly and accompanied by a variety of tortures.
100 years after the Code of Law of Ivan the Terrible, in the Council Code, execution was divided into qualified and simple. Simple was carried out by hanging, qualified - by cutting off the head, burning or quartering. Ivan especially loved impalement.
For pregnant convicts, the death penalty was postponed until the moment of childbirth.
Peter I
The maximum number of crimes that were punishable by death was recorded during the reign of Peter.
Although in writing execution was used in 123 cases of violation of the law, in practice it was actually used in rare exceptions. They were executed only for treason, murder and rebellion.
All other violations of order were punished by branding, exile to hard labor, or corporal punishment.
From Elizaveta Petrovna to the 1905 revolution
After the reign of Anna Ioannovna (Bloody), who was terribly fond of public executions, Peter's daughter abolished the death penalty . In fact, the murder was replaced by a political execution - a link to hard labor.
Catherine the Great continued Elizabeth's policy and did not apply the death penalty. However, members of Pugachev's gangster society, who raged during her reign, were executed by quartering.
Alexander II and III, Nicholas II used only two types of death penalty: hanging and shooting . As a rule, military men were shot, and civilians were hanged.
In 1881, public executions were abolished. On average, about 15-45 people were executed each year in the 19th century. But after the revolution, executions began to occur much more often.
Death penalty in the USSR
The Provisional Government, guided by the principles of humanity in civil society, abolished the death penalty in October 1917. But after six months this decree ceased to apply.
Every schoolchild knows how the death penalty was carried out in the USSR. Shooting is the favorite method of dealing with dissidents . Since February 1918, execution without trial was allowed for counter-revolutionaries, spies and hooligans.
The Cheka received very broad powers to carry out the death penalty. During the Great Terror in the 1930s, the number of executions reached unprecedented proportions. So, in what year was the death penalty abolished?
The last execution in Russia was carried out in 1996 against the maniac Golovkin.
Why was the death penalty abolished in Russia, and who abolished the method of punishment so popular in Soviet times?
Twenty years without a scaffold
With the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna in 1741, executions stopped. Even for the empress's main opponents - Count Osterman, Field Marshal Minich and Chief Marshal Levenwolde - the death sentences imposed were replaced by exile to Siberia. However, there were no legislative restrictions on the death penalty, Elizabeth simply did not sign the sentences, and the local authorities, accustomed to closely monitoring “signals” from the capital, also suddenly became more humane. Although executions still occurred in the provinces. This went on for two years.
Only on May 7 (18 New Style), 1744, a decree was issued, which was officially called “On sending to the Senate lists of convicts sentenced to death, or political death, regarding the failure to execute the sentence on them before the Senate decree” (the punctuation of the original has been preserved):
Author of the quote
“The Governing Senate has determined that in the Gubernias, in the Provinces and cities, as well as in the army and in other places of the Russian Empire, capital punishment and political death are carried out not for proper guilt, and sometimes even innocently. For this reason, by decree of Her Imperial Majesty, the Governing Senate Ordered: for the best discretion from all Collegiums and Chancelleries, Governorates and Provinces and commands about such convicts sentenced to death, or political death for which they are convicted, now send detailed information to the Senate and list extracts; and before receiving decrees to that effect, executions should not be carried out on those convicts, and in the future, those convicts who are sentenced to death or political death should send detailed and listed statements of their guilt to the Senate about their guilt, and before receiving decrees to that effect, no execution"
(PSZRI. Vol. 12, p. 114, document 8944)
It is interesting that in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire this decree was published between two decrees of May 17, which gave some researchers reason to assume that it, too, was signed not on the seventh, but on the 17th, but the one was lost somewhere. However, at a distance of 275 years, this dispute does not look very fundamental.
Execution_2
Empress Elizaveta Petrovna
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
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A stream of sentences from all cities and villages poured into the Senate office. Documents on those convicted in cases of the Secret Chancery and war criminals were also received here. In order to prepare a summary from them for the highest confirmation, it was necessary to establish an expedition under the Senate led by secretary Ivan Sudakov. Hearings on the sentences of those sentenced to death and political death were held in the strictest secrecy: Senate protocolists were not allowed to attend these meetings, and Sudakov and the expedition clerks were placed in a “chamber separate from public affairs.” In less than 10 years since the decree was issued, the Senate had accumulated 279 death sentences and another 3,579 cases related to murder, theft and robbery were pending and awaiting the empress’s decision. However, Elizabeth never signed any of them.
This, of course, did not mean that the convicts were released from punishment - they continued to languish in dungeons, awaiting their fate. The prisons were overcrowded. Only 10 years later, on September 30, 1754, a decree was issued explaining what to do with previously convicted criminals: severely punish them with a whip, tear out their nostrils, brand them with the word “thief” on their foreheads, and then send them to Siberia or other places of hard labor.
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
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At court and among local officials, the empress’s behavior caused surprise and bewilderment. Many feared that the actual abolition of the death penalty could lead to a surge in crime, which was already not a rare phenomenon. In some parts of the country, local authorities still resorted to the “highest measure”; for example, such cases are known for certain in Revel (now Tallinn) and the Zaporozhye Sich. On this occasion, the Kiev Governor-General Mikhail Ivanovich Leontyev reported to the Senate that, contrary to the issued decree, two Cossacks who participated in the robbery and destroyed the house of the Polish Jewish tenant Schmoll were hanged in Zaporozhye. There was no punishment for the disobedient officials, but in 1746 and 1749, repeated decrees were issued specifically for these lands, confirming the need to send death sentences to the capital.
Since 1754, a codification commission, created on the initiative of Pyotr Shuvalov, worked under the Senate. She was asked to write a draft code in four parts: “on the court”, “on the various states of subjects”, “on movable and immovable property”, “on executions, punishments and fines”. A year later, two parts were ready, the most elaborate from the point of view of the commission members - “judicial” and “criminal”. The Senate approved them and submitted them to the Empress for approval. However, because they included the death penalty, Elizabeth did not sign them.
Prerequisites for abolishing execution
It is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of when the death penalty was abolished in Russia. And in general, is there the death penalty in Russia today?
Legally, no one canceled it. It exists, and it is spelled out in the current version of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In Art. 44 Among the types of criminal punishment, the death penalty is present. A Art. 59 is even called “Death Penalty”.
The beginning of the process of non-application of the death penalty began during the reign of Boris Yeltsin. In 1996, he issued a decree to gradually reduce the use of execution as capital punishment.
To do this, it was necessary to develop a draft law on the country’s accession to the International Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms No. 6. To this day it has not been ratified. This means that the document has no legal force in the country.
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The position of specialists on this issue is not so clear. “In Russia, many people are indeed in favor of the death penalty, but a serious question arises as to how effective it is and how fair the sentences will be,” explains Vladimir Annikov, head of the corporate legal unit of the European Legal Service. “We have had high-profile cases that show that the system of applying criminal coercive measures is often ineffective. Starting from corruption on the part of persons participating in the investigation, ending with issues of inquisitoriality of a number of processes, when people receive real sentences in the absence of a criminal offense.”
The possibility that innocent people could be harmed worries many other professionals as well. “The fact that the verdict was unfair may be revealed years later. If we are talking about deprivation of liberty, then the situation can at least be corrected. “I myself came across a case where two innocent people were almost sentenced to death,” recalls Russian politician and human rights activist Valery Borshchev. — The murder of girls was investigated in Arkhangelsk. The investigator was already preparing two people for execution. I was a State Duma deputy at the time, and the mother of these girls came to me and said that the wrong people were being judged. I turned to the Deputy Prosecutor General, they took up the case, and, indeed, it was proven that they were innocent. It is often said that such cases are few, but this is a matter of human life. If it weren’t for that woman who, despite the terrible grief, was able to think about others, they would simply have been shot.”
the death penalty
Photo: IZVESTIA/Alexey Mayshev
According to the expert, capital punishment for a crime is itself paradoxical. “This is an emotional reaction, I can completely understand it. When a scoundrel and a scoundrel commits a terrible crime, a desire immediately arises to tear him apart, to lynch him, but these emotions are permissible at the level of people, and not at the level of the state. It pursues a certain policy. If we condemn murder, then murder cannot be punished with murder. This is a paradox,” the human rights activist is sure.
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Many leading politicians and government officials oppose the introduction of the death penalty. Thus, Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko said on Monday, October 14, that she is opposed to “taking people’s lives.” The Kremlin is also not discussing the possibility of returning the death penalty. This was announced by the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov.
Moratorium
The moratorium on the death penalty in the country began on February 2, 1999, when the Constitutional Court banned the use of the death penalty without the participation of a jury.
And although there is no direct indication of its prohibition in the legal act, it served as the beginning of a “veto” on the use of execution.
For more than 10 years, the authorities have not returned to consider the issue of applying the death penalty and ratifying the protocol of the Convention.
So, when was the moratorium introduced? In fact, the Constitutional Court of Russia adopted an act according to which no court in the country has the right to impose a death sentence on November 19, 2009.
As the basis for this decision, an explanation was presented of the irreversible process in the country’s legal environment of abandoning the use of execution in view of international trends and the country’s obligations to sign the Convention.
In total, the question of who abolished the death penalty: B. Yeltsin or V. Putin actually makes no sense. The first began the process of abandoning it, the second continued. In reality, the death penalty has not been abolished.
