On May 20, 1998, the House of Commons voted to ratify the 6th Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting capital punishment except "in time of war or imminent threat of war." The last remaining provisions for the death penalty under military jurisdiction (including in wartime) were removed when section 21(5) of the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force on 9 November 1998. The UK later (10 October 2003; effective from 1 February 2004) acceded to the 13th Protocol, which prohibits the death penalty under all circumstances, so that the UK may no longer legislate to restore the death penalty while it is subject to the Convention.
Does anyone realise we are debating something that will never be
Great deterrent
Notable executions
Note: This list does not include the beheadings of nobility.
1305: William Wallace, Scottish resistance fighter, was hanged, drawn and quartered for treason.
1499: Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne, was hanged at Tyburn.
1606: On 31 January the Gunpowder Plotters of 1605 were hanged, drawn and quartered.
1612: Edward Wightman became the last person in England to be burnt at the stake for heresy, at Lichfield.
1660: At the English Restoration nine regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered for their part in the death of King Charles I. Also John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Ireton were posthumously executed: disinterred from Westminster Abbey and hanged, drawn, and quartered.
1681: Oliver Plunkett was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on July 1, 1681, becoming the last Catholic martyr to die in England.
1684: Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards became the last people to be hanged for witchcraft in Britain.
1708: Michael Hammond, aged 7, and his sister, aged 11, were reputedly hanged at Lynn for felony. If true, Michael would have been the youngest person ever to suffer the death penalty in Britain.
1724: Jack Sheppard, house-breaker, was hanged at Tyburn for burglary on 16 November after four successful escape attempts from jail. His partner-in-crime, highwayman Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, was similarly executed for the same burglary five days earlier.
1725: Jonathan Wild, criminal overlord and fraudulent "Thief Taker General", was hanged at Tyburn on May 24 (over six months after Jack Sheppard's and Blueskin's executions) for actually aiding criminals.
1739: Dick Turpin, highwayman, was hanged.
1746: Nine Catholic members of the Manchester Regiment, Jacobites, were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason on Wednesday July 30, 1746 at Kennington Common (now Kennington Park).
1757: John Byng becomes the only British admiral ever executed (by firing squad) by the Royal Navy. His crime was to have failed to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca.
1760: Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers was executed at Tyburn on 5 May for the murder of a servant. He is the only peer to have been hanged for murder.
1789: Catherine Murphy was the last woman to be burned to death (legally) in England. The penalty was abolished the next year.
1820: Andrew Hardie and John Baird were hanged and beheaded at Stirling after being tried for their part in the Radical War in Scotland.
1828: William Corder was hanged at Bury St Edmunds on August 11 for the murder of Maria Marten at the Red Barn a year before.
1861: Martin Doyle became the last person to be hanged for attempted murder at Chester on the 27 August.
1868: Frances Kidder became the last woman to be hanged in public on 2 April.
1868: Michael Barrett was executed on 26 May at Newgate Prison for the Fenian bombing at Clerkenwell, the last public hanging in Britain.
1910: Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged on 23 November in London's Pentonville Prison for the murder of his wife.
1914: Private Thomas Highgate was executed by firing squad on 8 September, the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during the World War I.
1916: Roger Casement was hanged at Pentonville on 3 August for treason as one of the 7 leaders of the failed Irish Easter Rising.
1923: Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters are hanged simultaneously on 9 January in London's Holloway and Pentonville Prisons respectively. The case was controversial because Thompson did not directly participate in the murder for which she was hanged.
1941: Josef Jakobs was executed by firing-squad on 15 August, the last execution in the Tower of London.
1946: William Joyce, better known as "Lord Haw-Haw", was hanged for treason on 3 January in London's Wandsworth Prison. He was actually an American citizen, not British, but was convicted of treason because, as the holder of a British passport (albeit one fraudulently obtained), he nevertheless owed allegiance to the British sovereign. Theodore Schurch, hanged for treachery the next day, was the last person to be executed for an offence other than murder; he was executed at Pentonville. As a serviceman he was tried by court-martial.
1947: Walter Rowland was hanged in Manchester on 27 February for the murder of Olive Balchin despite maintaining his innocence. While he had been awaiting execution, another man confessed to the crime. A Home Office report dismissed the latter's confession as a fake, but in 1951 he attacked another woman and was found guilty but insane.
1949: Margaret Allen, aged 43, was hanged on 12 January for killing a 70-year-old woman in the course of a robbery, the first woman to be hanged in Britain for 12 years.
1949: John George Haigh, the "acid-bath murderer", was executed at Wandsworth on 10 August.
1950: Timothy Evans was hanged on 9 March at Pentonville for the murder of his baby daughter at 10 Rillington Place, north-west London. He had also confessed to killing his wife. A fellow inhabitant at the same address, John Christie, later found to be a sexual serial killer, gave key evidence against Evans. Christie was executed in 1953 for the murder of his own wife. Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966. In 2004 the Court of Appeal refused to consider overturning the conviction due to the costs and resources that would be involved. See 10 Rillington Place.
1950: George Kelly was hanged at Liverpool on 28 March for murder, but had his conviction quashed posthumously by the Court of Appeal in June 2003.
1952: Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns were executed on 25 April for killing a woman during a robbery in Liverpool. They claimed that they had been doing a different burglary in Manchester, and others involved in the crime supported this. A Home Office report rejected this evidence. Huge crowds gathered outside Liverpool's Walton Prison as they were executed.
1952: Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a Somali seaman, was hanged on 3 September in Cardiff for murder. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction posthumously in 1998 after hearing that crucial evidence implicating another Somali was withheld at his trial.
1953: Derek Bentley was executed on 28 January at Wandsworth prison as an accomplice to the murder of a police officer by his 16-year-old friend Christopher Craig. Craig, a minor, was not executed and instead served 10 years. Derek Bentley was granted a posthumous pardon on July 29, 1993. The Court of Appeal overturned his conviction on 30 July 1998.
1953: John Reginald Halliday Christie was executed on 15 July at Pentonville for the murder of his wife Ethel.
1954: Styllou Christofi, aged 53, penultimate woman executed by Britain on 13 December.
1955: Ruth Ellis, aged 28, was executed on 13 July, the 15th, youngest, and last woman to be hanged in Britain in the 20th century.
1959: Guenther Podola was executed on 5 November 1959, the last person to be hanged for the murder of a policeman.
1960: Francis Forsyth was hanged on 10 November, the last 18-year-old to be executed in Britain; Anthony Joseph Miller, 19, was hanged in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison on 22 December 1960, the last teenager to be executed in Britain.
1961: Robert McGladdery, 25, was hanged on December 20 in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, the last person to be executed in Northern Ireland, for the murder of Pearl Gamble in Newry.
1962: James Hanratty was executed at Bedford on 4 April after a controversial -murder trial. In 2002 Hanratty's body was exhumed and the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction after Hanratty's DNA was linked to crime scene samples.
1963: Henry Burnett, aged 21, was executed on 15 August at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen for the murder of seaman Thomas Guyan, the last hanging in Scotland.
1964: Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, were executed on 13 August at 8 a.m. for the murder of John Alan West, the last people executed in Britain .
References
1 Punishments at the Old Bailey--Late 17th Century to Early 19th Century. The Old Bailey Proceedings Online (2003). Retrieved on 2007-03-13.
2 Gatrell, V. A. C., The Hanging Tree, OUP, Oxford, 1994
3 Naval Discipline Act 1957, section 93; previously Naval Discipline Act (1866), section 6.
4 Last executions in the UK
5 Naval Discipline Act 1957, section 93.
6 Human Rights Act 1998 (Amendment) Order 2004
7 13th Protocol
8 Bowcott, Owen (2001). Caribbean severs link to privy council. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-03-13.
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10 Human Rights (Amendment) (Jersey) Order 2006
11 Human Rights (Jersey) Law 2000
12 Report by the Bailiwick of Guernsey (page 5)
13 UN Human Rights report para. 46
14
15 Human Rights Act 2001 (13th Protocol) Order 2004
16 Human Rights Act 2001 (Appointed Day) (No. 2) Order 2006
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