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Capital punishment in Ireland


Capital punishment in Ireland was prohibited in statute law in 1990, having been abolished in 1964 for most offences including ordinary murder. The last to be executed was Michael Manning, hanged for murder in 1954. Subsequent death sentences, the last handed down in 1985, were commuted by the President, on the advice of the Government, to terms of imprisonment of up to 40 years. A constitutional amendment passed by referendum in 2001 prohibits reintroduction of the death penalty, even during a state of emergency or war. Capital punishment is also forbidden by several human rights treaties to which the state is a party.

Early Irish law discouraged capital punishment. Murder was usually punished with two types of fine: a fixed éraic and a variable Log nEnech; a murderer was only killed if he and his relatives could not pay the fine. The Senchas Már's description of the execution of the murderer of Saint Patrick's charioteer Odran has been interpreted as a failed attempt to replace pagan restorative justice with Christian retributive justice.

After the Norman conquest of Ireland, English law provided the model for Irish law. This originally mandated a death sentence for any felony, a class of crimes established by common law but extended by various Acts of Parliament; a situation later dubbed the "Bloody Code". Reforms passed from 1827 allowed judges to sentence to transportation, and later penal servitude, for many hitherto capital crimes. The Capital Punishment (Ireland) Act 1842 brought the law in Ireland closer to that of England by reducing the penalties for numerous offences, and abolishing the capital crime of serving in the army or navy of France. The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 reduced the number of capital crimes from over two hundred to just three: murder, treason and piracy with violence. The last public hanging in Ireland was in 1868; after the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 executions were carried out behind prison walls. Irish doctor Samuel Haughton developed the humane "Standard Drop" method of hanging that came into use in 1866. The last peacetime execution while Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was of William Scanlan in 1911 for murdering his sister-in-law.


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