page_title: Death and culture
section_title: Capital punishment
hierarchical_section_title: Death and culture / Legal aspects / Capital punishment
caption_attribution_description: un petit mec assez sympa qui est pendu! oh lala
context_page_description: Death refers to the permanent termination of life-sustaining processes in an organism, i.e. when all biological systems of a human being cease to operate. Death and its spiritual ramifications are debated in every manner all over the world. Most civilizations dispose of their dead with rituals developed through spiritual traditions.
context_section_description: Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the killing of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences.
  Historically, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. Among democratic countries around the world, all European (except Belarus) and Latin American states, many Pacific Area states (including Australia, New Zealand and Timor Leste), and Canada have abolished capital punishment, while the majority of the United States, Guatemala, and most of the Caribbean as well as some democracies in Asia (e.g., Japan and India) and Africa (e.g., Botswana and Zambia) retain it. Among nondemocratic countries, the use of the death penalty is common but not universal.
  In most places that practice capital punishment today, the death penalty is reserved as punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries, sexual crimes, such as adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy, the formal renunciation of one's religion. In many retentionist countries, drug trafficking is also a capital offense. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.
  There are five countries that still execute child offenders.  Iran accounts for two-thirds of the global total of such executions, and currently has roughly 120 people on death row for crimes committed as juveniles (up from 71 in 2007).
  Capital punishment is a very contentious issue. Supporters of capital punishment argue that it deters crime, prevents recidivism, and is an appropriate form of punishment for the crime of murder. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it does not deter criminals more than life imprisonment, violates human rights, leads to executions of some who are wrongfully convicted, and discriminates against minorities and the poor. It seems that both sides make their proper points in supporting one of those decisions, but a compromise can not be reached.
caption: Etching of a hanging by Francisco Goya.
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