Death Penalty News

The death penalty is (almost) as old as humanity itself. Did you for example know that the first established death penalty laws date back as far as the 18th century B.C.? The Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon codified capital punishment for 25 different crimes. It was only in the 20th century that increasing numbers of countries in the Western world started to abolish a punishment that Amnesty International today describes as "cruel, inhuman, and degrading." Luxembourg was no exception. The death penalty was only officially abolished in 1979 under the remarkable Luxembourgish politician Robert Krieps (fun fact: he's the grandfather of actress Vicky Krieps). The death penalty before 1795 The methods of execution largely depended on the nature of the crime. In 1570, the court in Remich for example declared that criminals may be "executed by the sword, by fire, by the gallows by means of rope or chain, or by drowning in the Moselle river." A decree f...

The death penalty has existed for as long as there have been laws. In the 18th century BC in Babylon, the Code of King Hammurabi laid out the ultimate punishment for 25 different crimes . The practice continues in the US today, sanctioned by 30 states and federal law. Still, only one person has ever been sentenced to death for hate crimes under federal law, and that’s self-declared white supremacist Dylann Roof , who shot nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Now, it seems a second such sentence could be handed down to Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 27. In a statement issued after the shooting on Saturday, US attorney general Jeff Sessions condemned the violence, saying “every American” has the right to safely attend a house of worship. “These alleged crimes are reprehensible and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation,” he said. “Acc...