A Brief History
On September 10, 1977, Tunisian French landscaper and pimp, Hamida Djandoubi, became the last person executed by guillotine in France, and the last person executed for a crime in Western Europe.
Digging Deeper
As the civilized world moved away from the death penalty, a furious debate about capital punishment has raged, with nearly half of the United States abolishing it altogether. Today, 27 states, the Federal government, and American Samoa retain capital punishment as a potential sentence, while in Europe only Belarus and Russia retain capital punishment.
American neighbors Canada and Mexico have abolished the death penalty, as have most of South America and Australia. China, India, Japan, and many Muslim countries retain the ultimate sentence.
The troubling part is that in the US, since 1972, at least 190 people sentenced to death have been found to be innocent. The horror of executing an innocent person casts a shadow over the debate. What do you think?
Question for students (and subscribers): Why should we or should we not have a death penalty? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Garfield, David. The Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in the USA. Kindle, 2015.
Greader, George. Death Penalty: To Be Or Not To Be. Kindle, 2018.
The featured image in this article is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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