tury society has chosen to deal with capital punishment, ancient societies regularly executed their undesirable elements, and life was held in a different stead than in contemporary society.4 In the Middle Ages the number of capital crimes increased, as did the manner in which those crimes were punished. Ironically, as the religiosity of the society increased, so did its penchant for capital punishment.5
The number of offenses punishable by death continued to increase into the 16th and 17th centuries, where by the early 1700s there were at least 160 capital offenses in England. ____________________
4 John Laurence, The History of Capital Punishment, (Secaucus: Citadel Press, 1960), 1 2.
In the 1500s, however, the most common crime given the death penalty was treason.6 One of the common features of all the horrible forms of capital punishment employed during these times was that all were designed as a warning to others one of the earliest forms of deterrence. In this manner, hanging in the gallows was considered effective since it allowed the public to witness the death of the criminal in a most vicious manner.7
As previously mentioned, the 1700s were filled with punishable by death. Not only were the crimes of treason, heresy, and murder punishable by death, but stealing (Act of 1713), and even cutting down a tree (Act of 1723) were likewise considered capital crimes.8 In this one can see that the death penalty became almost the punishment of choice no longer used in the most serious of crimes, but more to insure that an increasingly individualistic populace could be controlled in some manner.
The law, however, was clearly more severe than in practice since it was still up to a judge and often a jury to recommend the ultimate punishment. This, in a way, may also be seen as a reason that the state governing bodies placed capital punishment on the books for so many, seemingly minor,
offenses. As the j...