Death Penalty Revisited

Abstract

Death penalty as a type of criminal punishment is known in practically all the countries of the world. The problem of its moral justification and practical value has been discussed in the doctrine of criminal law for almost three centuries, starting with Cesare Beccaria’s «On Crimes and Punishments». The debates grew especially heated in the middle of the19th century in Germany, and, starting from the second half of the century, — in other countries, including Russia. However, there is still no consensus between the supporters and the opponents of the death penalty. In the criminal law science of Russia, both pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet, the views of opponents of the death penalty prevail. Nevertheless, its supporters also defend the death penalty not in principle, but as a temporarily necessary means of combating the most dangerous crimes. The Russian legislators have also repeatedly changed their attitude to this punishment: they abolished it, then returned it to the arsenal of criminal legal means. The first at tempt to abolish death penalty was undertaken by Empress Elisabeth Petrovna, but her efforts turned out to be weak and inconsistent and thus unsuccessful, as well as the timid steps of Catherine II. There were some attempts to abolish death penalty in Russia on the verge of the 19th and the 20th centuries, which also failed. The Provisional Government abolished death penalty in February 1917 only to reinstitute it three months later. The Soviets also abolished it several times, but brought it back a short time later. Currently, the possibility of applying the death penalty is provided for both by the Constitution and the Criminal Code of our country. However, its application is blocked by the Ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 1344-O-P dated November 19, 2009. In the article, the legality of the prohibition of the death penalty by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation is questioned; the author believes that the abolition of the death penalty is only possible by introducing the corresponding amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation.