capital punishment
Atomic claims
Capital punishment is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for a crime.
As of 2025, more than two-thirds of the world's countries have abolished capital punishment in law or practice.
Statistical studies on whether capital punishment deters crime show mixed and contested results, with no consensus among researchers.
Methods of execution currently in use include lethal injection, hanging, beheading, shooting, and electrocution.
capital punishment is an instance of manner of death.
capital punishment is a subclass of execution.
capital punishment is a subclass of sentence.
capital punishment is a subclass of cause of death.
capital punishment is a subclass of homicide.
capital punishment is a subclass of punishment.
capital punishment is a subclass of unnatural death.
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct.
The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution.
A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row".
Etymologically, the term capital (lit.
'of the head', derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods.
Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements.
However, states have also imposed punitive executions for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures.
Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment.
For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression.
As of 2021, 55 countries retain capital punishment, 108 countries have taken a position to abolish it de jure for all crimes, 8 have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes), and 28 are abolitionist in practice.
Capital punishment is morally justified as retribution for the most serious crimes.
Capital punishment violates the inherent right to life and dignity of the person.
External references: Wikidata Q8454