Capital punishment in Lithuania was ruled unconstitutional and abolished for all crimes in 9 December 1998. [1] Lithuania is a member of the Council of Europe and has signed and ratified Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights on complete abolition of death penalty. [2] From March 1990 to December 1998, Lithuania executed seven people, all men. The last execution in the country occurred in July 1995, when Lithuanian mafia boss Boris Dekanidze was executed.
When Lithuania declared independence in February 1918, it adopted the criminal code based on the Russian Criminal Code of 1903 but with substantial amendments. [3] The code provided for the death penalty only for crimes against the state (for example, conspiring to intervene with the imperial succession), but military law of war provided for death penalty by shooting or hanging for some 30 different crimes including banditry, robbery, rape, and premeditated murder. [4] When Lithuania updated its statutes in January and February 1919, the duality remained: the death penalty was abolished in the criminal code but was retained in the military law (Lithuanian: Ypatingi valstybės apsaugos įstatai). [5] Article 14 of the military law provided for death penalty for eight crimes, mostly directed against the state, the military, or the officials, but also included armed robbery with murder. [6] The provisional constitution of 1920 even spoke about the abolition of the death penalty. [5] However, Lithuania with brief interruptions remained under the martial law until November 1938 when it was lifted due to German pressure in the months before the ultimatum of March 1939. [7]
Historian Sigita Černevičiūtė counted at least 146 executions in interwar Lithuania, though records are incomplete and fragmentary. [8] Due to the martial law, the executions were carried out by the military by shooting though legal acts provided hanging. [9] In 1937–1940, Lithuania operated a gas chamber in Aleksotas within the First Fort of the Kaunas Fortress. [9] In January 1937, the criminal code was amended to provide execution by gas which at the time was viewed as more civilized and humane. Lithuania considered and rejected execution by poison. [9] The first execution was carried on July 27, 1937: Bronius Pogužinskas, age 37, convicted of the murder of five members of a Jewish family. Černevičiūtė counted at least nine executions in the gas chamber. [9] Of the nine, eight were convicted of murder. One, Aleksandras Maurušaitis, was in addition convicted of anti-government actions during the 1935 Suvalkija farmers' strike. The last known execution took place on May 19, 1940, for robbery. The fate of the gas chamber after the occupation by the Soviet Union in June 1940 is unclear. [9]
During the chaotic years of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, not all executions were properly carried out. For example, in 1919, communist activists Feliksas Valiukas and his wife were executed without a trial and Jurgis Smolskis was executed (allegedly during an escape attempt) even though he received only a six-year prison sentence. [10]
In February 1920, four men were executed for instigating a mutiny among soldiers stationed in Kaunas. [11] Between the coup in December 1926 and Soviet occupation in June 1940, Lithuania was ruled by authoritarian President Antanas Smetona and there were several political executions. Four communists were executed in the immediate aftermath of the December 1926 coup while sentences of two others were commuted to life imprisonment. [12] Eight people were executed for their participation in the anti-Smetona revolt in Tauragė in September 1927 while 14 other were pardoned. [13] General Konstantinas Kleščinskis was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and executed in June 1927. [14] Aleksandras Vosylius was executed in May 1929 for an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras. [12] 18 people received death sentences for their participation in the 1935 Suvalkija farmers' strike, but the majority received presidential pardons and only five were executed. [12] In other instances, the presidential pardon was used more generously. For example, three men, including General Petras Kubiliūnas, received pardons for their role in the 1934 anti-Smetona coup and five men received pardons for their conviction of murder during the Neumann–Sass case. [12]
During the Soviet occupation, the criminal code provided for the death penalty in 16 articles. [15] After the declaration of independence in March 1990, a new criminal code was adopted in December 1991, in which the death penalty was provided only in Article 105 for premeditated murder in aggravating circumstances. [15] Lithuania became a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in February 1992. The covenant, among other things, provided that each person had the right to petition for clemency. [16] In July 1994, amendments to the criminal code specified that women or people younger than 18 at the time of the crime could not receive death sentences. [16] The execution of the death penalty was suspended on July 25, 1996 by a decree of President Algirdas Brazauskas. The president refused to review clemency petitions without which no death penalty could be carried out. [16]
Abolition of the death penalty was one of the requirements for Lithuania's accession to the European Union in its 2004 enlargement. However, opinion polls found that 70–80% of Lithuanians supported its retention. [17] Thus, members of Seimas (the Lithuanian parliament) were reluctant to vote for its abolition. Instead, Seimas brought a case to the Constitutional Court of Lithuania to determine whether the death penalty was constitutional. [17] On December 9, 1998, the Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional as it was contrary to Articles 18 (Human rights and freedoms shall be innate), 19 (The right to life of a human being shall be protected by law), and 21.3 (It shall be prohibited to torture or injure a human being, degrade his dignity, subject him to cruel treatment, or to establish such punishments) of the Constitution of Lithuania. [16] On December 22, the criminal code was amended to strike out the death penalty effective December 31, 1998. [18] Sentences for nine people on death row were commuted to life imprisonment. [19]
In 2013, a violent murder of a woman reignited the debate on the capital punishment. Parliament Speaker Vydas Gedvilas publicly stated that the idea of reintroducing capital punishment merits consideration and members of the Order and Justice proposed a bill to reinstate it. A poll found that about half of the respondents would support capital punishment, and only 37 percent were against the death penalty. [20]
Between 1990 and 1995, some 30 people received death sentences. [15] From March 1990 to December 1998, Lithuania executed seven men by shooting with a single firearm: [18]
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as 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 refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom predates the formation of the UK, having been used within the British Isles from ancient times until the second half of the 20th century. The last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging, and took place in 1964; capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969. Although unused, the death penalty remained a legally defined punishment for certain offences such as treason until it was completely abolished in 1998; the last execution for treason took place in 1946. In 2004 the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights became binding on the United Kingdom; it prohibits the restoration of the death penalty as long as the UK is a party to the convention.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Belarus. At least four executions were carried out in the country in 2018.
Capital punishment in France is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty". The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, who was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.
Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries except for Belarus and Russia, the latter of which has a moratorium and has not conducted an execution since September 1996. The complete ban on capital punishment is enshrined in both the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU) and two widely adopted protocols of the European Convention on Human Rights of the Council of Europe, and is thus considered a central value. Of all modern European countries, San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands were the first to abolish capital punishment, whereas only Belarus still practises capital punishment in some form or another. In 2012, Latvia became the last EU member state to abolish capital punishment in wartime.
Capital punishment is forbidden by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Czech Republic and is simultaneously prohibited by international legal obligations arising from the Czech Republic's membership in both the Council of Europe and the European Union.
Capital punishment in Germany has been abolished for all crimes, and is now explicitly prohibited by constitution. It was abolished in West Germany in 1949, in the Saarland in 1956, and East Germany in 1987. The last person executed in Germany was the East German Werner Teske, who was executed at Leipzig Prison in 1981.
Capital punishment is forbidden in Switzerland by article 10, paragraph 1 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. Capital punishment was abolished from federal criminal law in 1942, but remained available in military criminal law until 1992. The last actual executions in Switzerland took place during World War II.
Capital punishment in Malaysia is a legal penalty in Malaysian law.
Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania is the constitutional court of the Republic of Lithuania, established by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992. It began the activities after the adoption of the Law of Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania on 3 February 1993. Since its inception, the court has been located in Vilnius.
The use of capital punishment in Italy has been banned since 1889, with the exception of the period 1926–1947, encompassing the rule of Fascism in Italy and the early restoration of democracy. Before the unification of Italy in 1860, capital punishment was performed in almost all pre-unitarian states, except for Tuscany, where it was historically abolished in 1786. It is currently out of use as a result of the adoption of the current constitution, and defunct as of 1 January 1948.
Capital punishment remained in Polish law until September 1, 1998, but from 1989 executions were suspended, the last one taking place one year earlier. There is no death penalty envisaged for in current Polish penal law.
Capital punishment was completely abolished in Hungary on 24 October 1990 by the Constitutional Court. A month later on 1 December 1990 protocol No. 6 to the ECHR came into force. Hungary later adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR as well. The last condemned man to be executed, Ernő Vadász, was hanged for the crime of murder on 14 July 1988. In April 2015, following the murder of a woman in southern Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suggested that Hungary must reinstate capital punishment. This statement caused a strong reaction by EU officials, and Orbán had to retract it as a result. The European Union holds a strong opposition against the death penalty in its relation to the Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy.
Capital punishment in Romania was abolished in 1990, and has been prohibited by the Constitution of Romania since 1991.
Capital punishment was used from the creation of the modern Serbian state in 1804. On 26 February 2002, the Serbian Parliament adopted amendments striking the death penalty from the Criminal Code. The last execution, by shooting, took place on 14 February 1992, and the last death sentences were pronounced in 2001. Serbia is bound by the following international conventions prohibiting capital punishment : The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Protocols No. 6 and No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. According to Article 24 of the Serbian constitution (2006): „Human life is inviolable. There shall be no death penalty in the Republic of Serbia“.
Boris Dekanidze was the head of the Vilnius Brigade criminal organization in Lithuania. In 1994, he was convicted of ordering the murder of Lithuanian journalist Vitas Lingys and was executed by Lithuania. Dekanidze was the last person executed in Lithuania prior to the abolition of capital punishment in 1998.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in South Korea. As of December 2012, there were at least 60 people in South Korea on death row. The method of execution is hanging.
Capital punishment remains a legal penalty for multiple crimes in The Gambia. However, the country has taken recent steps towards abolishing the death penalty.
Ethiopia retains capital punishment while not ratified the Second Optional Protocol (ICCR) of UN General Assembly resolution. Historically, capital punishments was codified under Fetha Negest in order to fulfill societal desire. Death penalty can be applied through approval of the President, but executions are rare.
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