capital punishment

Introduction & Top Questions
Historical considerations
Arguments for and against capital punishment
- Moral arguments
- Utilitarian arguments
- Practical arguments
The abolition movement
Capital punishment in the early 21st century

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Padded gurney with black restraints and IV stands, used for lethal injection, sits in a bare room with white cinder block walls at the New Mexico state penitentiary.

Protestors at an anti-death penalty rally hold signs, including a large banner reading Stop Executions, with people of various ages standing and sitting in a public square.

Protesters in front of the US Supreme Court hold signs reading Free Mumia and Abolish the Death Penalty during a demonstration for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

At a Glance

capital punishment summary

Related Questions

How can wrongful convictions affect debates about capital punishment?
How did Cesare Beccaria’s book On Crimes and Punishments influence abolitionists?
How did benefit of clergy allow some people in England to avoid execution?
How did diyah provide an alternative to execution under Islamic law?
How did execution methods in Europe change between the Middle Ages and the modern era?
How did guided-discretion death penalty laws differ from mandatory death penalty laws?
How did lethal injection become a widely used execution method in the United States?
How did pardons and transportation reduce the number of executions in England?
How did the traditional three-drug lethal-injection procedure work?
How does Islamic law treat murder differently from certain fixed crimes punishable by death?
How does the Eighth Amendment affect challenges to capital punishment in the United States?
How have appeals affected the length of time prisoners spend on death row?
What actions did Illinois Governor George Ryan take after wrongful-conviction concerns arose?
What moral arguments do supporters use to defend the death penalty for murder?
When did England ban public executions?
When did benefit of clergy end in England?
Which crimes could receive the death penalty in ancient Greece?
Which methods of execution were used in ancient China?
Who was the first person executed by lethal injection in the United States?
Why can an inadequate anesthetic dose make a lethal injection especially painful?
Why did DNA evidence lead some U.S. states to consider moratoriums on executions?
Why did Oklahoma adopt lethal injection in 1977?
Why did South Africa’s Constitutional Court rule that capital punishment was unconstitutional in 1995?
Why did the Supreme Court ban the death penalty for rape?
Why did the Supreme Court consider death sentences arbitrary in Furman v. Georgia?
Why did the Supreme Court rule that people under age 18 at the time of their crimes cannot be executed?
Why did the Supreme Court rule that people with intellectual disabilities cannot be executed?
Why do concerns about racial prejudice arise in death penalty cases?
Why do opponents argue that capital punishment sends a harmful moral message?
Why do opponents consider the death penalty disproportionate for crimes that do not involve killing?
Why do people sentenced to death often spend many years on death row?
Why has the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticized public executions?
Why was Michigan’s 1846 abolition of capital punishment historically important?
Why was Psalm 51 called the “neck verse” in English law?
Why were people branded after receiving benefit of clergy in England?
Why were public executions held before large crowds?
When was lethal injection first adopted in the United States?
What chemicals are typically used in a lethal injection?
What problems have been associated with lethal injections?

Politics, Law & Government Law, Crime & Punishment

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External Websites

PBS - FRONTLINE - History of the Death Penalty
Gresham College - The Death Penalty: A Colonial Relic?
Digital Commons at UM Carey Law - The Crisis in Capital Punishment (PDF)
DigitalCommons at University of Nebraska - Lincoln - Kant and Capital Punishment Today (PDF)
Santa Clara University - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Capital Punishment :Our Duty or Our Doom?
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Capital Punishment
Cornell Law School - Legal Information Institute - Death penalty

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

capital punishment - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
capital punishment - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

capital punishment

law

Also known as: death penalty, execution

Written by

Roger Hood

Professor, Centre for Criminological Research, University of Oxford. Author of The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective and others.

Roger Hood

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 5, 2026 •History

Capital punishment is the execution of an offender who is sentenced to death after being convicted of a criminal offense by a court of law. Capital punishment should be distinguished from extrajudicial executions carried out without due process of law. The term death penalty is sometimes used interchangeably with capital punishment, though imposition of the penalty is not always followed by execution (even when it is upheld on appeal), because of the possibility of commutation...

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