| Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parliament of Australia | |
| |
| Citation | 100 of 1973 [2] |
| Royal assent | 18 September 1973 [2] |
| Status: Current legislation | |
The Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 is an Act of the Parliament of Australia that abolished capital punishment [2] provisions in the statute law of the Commonwealth of Australia and its internal and external territories. [3]
In 1962, Henry Bolte, the Premier of Victoria, brought the issue of capital punishment to the forefront of public attention by calling for the execution of a convicted criminal, Robert Tait. This event sparked the concern of humanist Senator Lionel Murphy, who began working in the Senate to limit the use of capital punishment through various laws e.g. in the Crimes (Aircraft) Bill of 1963. Murphy was a strong believer in the sanctity of human life and made a number of speeches in the Senate against capital punishment. His arguments included the notion that such laws go against the norms of civilised behavior, extreme penalties do not deter crime, capital punishment is subject to misuse, mistakes cannot be rectified, and rehabilitation is impossible. [4]
On February 3, 1967, Sir Henry Bolte's Liberal government in Victoria executed Ronald Ryan, a convicted criminal. Bolte is quoted as saying, "If you want to win an election have a hanging." [4]
In 1968, Murphy introduced a private members bill, the Death Penalty Abolition Act, which aimed to abolish the use of capital punishment in Australia. The bill was passed in the Senate three times with the support of senators from all political parties, but lapsed in the House of Representatives each time. [4]
Finally, on December 5, 1972, the Whitlam Labor government was elected and the first piece of legislation, on the second day of sitting, introduced by the then Attorney General Lionel Murphy, was his Death Penalty Abolition Act. It passed with the vote of all Labor senators and half the Liberal senators who voted. This marked the end of five years of struggle to abolish capital punishment in Australia. [4] : p.159
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime, usually following an authorised, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom predates the formation of the UK, having been used within the British Isles from ancient times until the second half of the 20th century. The last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging, and took place in 1964; capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969. Although unused, the death penalty remained a legally defined punishment for certain offences such as treason until it was completely abolished in 1998; the last execution for treason took place in 1946. In 2004 the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights became binding on the United Kingdom; it prohibits the restoration of the death penalty as long as the UK is a party to the convention.
Capital punishment in Canada dates back to Canada's earliest history, including its period as a French colony and, after 1763, its time as a British colony. From 1867 to the elimination of the death penalty for murder on July 26, 1976, 1,481 people had been sentenced to death, and 710 had been executed. Of those executed, 697 were men and 13 were women. The only method used in Canada for capital punishment of civilians after the end of the French regime was hanging. The last execution in Canada was the double hanging of Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin on December 11, 1962, at Toronto's Don Jail. The military prescribed firing squad as the method of execution until 1999, although no military executions had been carried out since 1946.
Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, but has been abolished in England and Wales, and repealed in Canada and New Zealand. It is a form of criminal libel that consists of the publication of material which exposes the Christian religion to scurrility, vilification, ridicule, and contempt, with material that must have the tendency to shock and outrage the feelings of Christians.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of New Hampshire for persons convicted of capital murder prior to 30 May 2019, when it was abolished prospectively for future crimes.
Capital punishment in India is a legal penalty for some crimes under the country's main substantive penal legislation, the Indian Penal Code, as well as other laws. Executions are carried out by hanging as the primary method of execution as given under Section 354(5) of the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973 is "Hanging by the neck until dead", and is imposed only in the 'rarest of cases'.
Capital punishment – the process of sentencing convicted offenders to death for the most serious crimes and carrying out that sentence, as ordered by a legal system – first appeared in New Zealand in a codified form when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840. It was first carried out with a public hanging in Victoria Street, Auckland in 1842, while the last execution occurred in 1957 at Mount Eden Prison, also in Auckland. In total, 85 people have been executed in New Zealand.
The "Bloody Code" was a series of laws in England, Wales and Ireland in the 18th and early 19th centuries which mandated the death penalty for a wide range of crimes. It was not referred to by this name in its own time; the name was given later owing to the sharply increased number of people given the death penalty, even for crimes considered minor by 21st century standards.
The Murder Act 1965 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished the death penalty for murder in Great Britain. The act replaced the penalty of death with a mandatory sentence of imprisonment for life.
Capital punishment in the Philippines specifically, the death penalty, as a form of state-sponsored repression, was introduced and widely practiced by the Spanish government in the Philippines. A substantial number of Filipino national martyrs like Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite, Thirteen Martyrs of Bagumbayan, Fifteen Martyrs of Bicol, Nineteen Martyrs of Aklan and Jose Rizal were executed by the Spanish government.
Capital punishment in the Cook Islands, a state in free association with New Zealand, was officially part of the legal system until 2007, although the punishment had never actually been put into practice.
Capital punishment in Australia was a form of punishment in Australia that has been abolished in all jurisdictions. Queensland abolished the death penalty in 1922. Tasmania did the same in 1968. The Commonwealth abolished the death penalty in 1973, with application also in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Victoria did so in 1975, South Australia in 1976, and Western Australia in 1984. New South Wales abolished the death penalty for murder in 1955, and for all crimes in 1985. In 2010, the Commonwealth Parliament passed legislation prohibiting the re-establishment of capital punishment by any state or territory. Australian law prohibits the extradition or deportation of a prisoner to another jurisdiction if they could be sentenced to death for any crime.
Capital punishment in Malaysia is a legal penalty in Malaysian law.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Israel. Capital punishment has only been imposed twice in the history of the state and is only to be handed out for treason, genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people during wartime. Israel is one of seven countries that has abolished capital punishment for "ordinary crimes only."
Capital punishment in Connecticut formerly existed as an available sanction for a criminal defendant upon conviction for the commission of a capital offense. Since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia until Connecticut repealed capital punishment in 2012, Connecticut had only executed one person, Michael Bruce Ross in 2005. Initially, the 2012 law allowed executions to proceed for those still on death row and convicted under the previous law, but on August 13, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that applying the death penalty only for past cases was unconstitutional.
Capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland was abolished in statute law in 1990, having been abolished in 1964 for most offences including ordinary murder. The last person to be executed by the British state on the island of Ireland was Robert McGladdery, who was hanged on 20 December 1961 in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The last person to be executed by the state in the Republic of Ireland was Michael Manning, hanged for murder on 20 April 1954. All subsequent death sentences in the Republic of Ireland, 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. The Twenty-first Amendment of the constitution, passed by referendum in 2001, prohibits the 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.
Capital punishment is legal in Tonga, but has not been imposed since 1982. The country's lack of executions puts it into the category of abolitionist in practice, where it retains the death penalty in law but has had a formal or informal moratorium for at least ten years. Tonga's low rate of murder convictions form part of the reason for the lack of executions, as well as its courts’ apparent unwillingness to impose the penalty unless it appears absolutely necessary to do so.
Capital punishment was outlawed in New York after the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, declared the practice as currently practiced unconstitutional under the state's constitution in 2004. However certain crimes occurring in the state that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
Capital punishment has been abolished in Iowa since 1965. Forty-five men were executed by hanging in Iowa between 1834 and 1963 for crimes including murder, rape, and robbery.
Capital punishment is no longer a legal punishment in Rwanda. The death penalty was abolished in Rwanda in 2007.
The full text of Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 at Wikisource