Learning about the history of public executions offers insight into our contemporary appetite for – and apathy towards – the suffering of others.
Iranian man Mohammad Mahdi Karami at a court hearing on January 5, 2023. Karami was executed on January 7 for allegedly being involved in anti-government protests.
Iranian state TV/EPA/AAP
Criminal trials in these courts often occur behind closed doors presided over by clerics, and there’s often no evidence beyond a confession extracted by means of torture.
In some cases, death row inmates have been strapped to the gurney for hours.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrock
In 1972, justices handed down a decision that attacked discriminatory and capricious death sentences. But it left the door ajar for states to continue the practice.
Activists including Myanmar citizens protest in Tokyo on July 26, 2022, against Myanmar’s recent execution of four prisoners
Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
Myanmar’s military junta is losing some control over the country, but its execution of four high-profile leaders and prisoners sends a warning to Myanmar citizens and the rest of the world.
The Justice Department has approved alternatives to lethal injections for federal executions. But no method of capital punishment has been without gruesome stories of what went wrong.
The lethal injection chamber at a California prison.
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The promised benefits of lethal injection – a quick, painless death – have never come true. There’s not even agreement about which drugs are best for executions.
Could using the guillotine be more humane than execution by lethal injection?
AlexLMX/Shutterstock
Many recent executions in the US by lethal injections have resulted in prolonged suffering before death. A historian asks: Could the guillotine be a preferable method?
The newly completed execution chamber at Ely State Prison in Ely, Nevada.
Nevada Department of Corrections via AP
To understand Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power and the public support for killing drug dealers and users, we need to distinguish the empirical from the normative – the ‘what is’ from ‘what should be’.
Human rights experts in Indonesia have repeatedly called for the government to stop the use of capital punishment.
Reuters/Beawiharta
Capital punishment is unfairly imposed, innocent people are regularly condemned and it is patently ineffective in deterring crime. So why to states retain the death penalty?
Demonstration against the death penalty in Paris.
World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Not only does capital punishment not deter crime but it’s more expensive than keeping a convicted murderer in prison for life.
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi waves at his trial with other Muslim Brotherhood members in Cairo, in May. He was subsequently sentenced to death. Egypt is among a handful of African countries that regularly execute.
Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
As with most aspects of criminal justice in sub-Saharan Africa, the death penalty as it currently exists in law is a colonial import. Criminal justice before the modern era was a private matter.
Feelings are running high in Australia.
EPA/Dan Himbrechts