Capital punishment

legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime

16 dated entries naming Capital punishment, drawn from 15 separate years between 250 BCE and 1999 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

Also written as Death sentence, Death-penalty, Execution (legal) in the source articles; Wikipedia redirects those to the same subject, so their entries are on this page.

JSON Wikipedia article Wikidata Q8454

3rd century BC

250 BCEMarcus Atilius Regulus, Roman general and consul (executed)source

1st century BC

40 BCESiege of Perusia: trying a last attempt to break the siege, which fails; Lucius Antonius surrenders to Octavian. His life is spared, but the citizens are executed or sold into slavery. Fulvia flees with her children and is exiled to Sicyon, where she dies of a sudden illness.source

5th century

476August 28 – Orestes is arrested by Odoacer near Piacenza, and swiftly executed.source

8th century

780Saxon Wars: King Charlemagne decrees the death penalty for any subdued Saxon refusing Christian baptism. Meanwhile Widukind builds up rebel strength in northern Saxony.source

9th century

803Caliph Harun al-Rashid has his friend and vizier (secretary) Ja'far ibn Yahya beheaded, The surviving members of the influential Barmakid family (Jafar's family) are imprisoned on the orders of Harun, and their property is confiscated.source

18th century

179130 May – Robespierre delivers a speech on the abolition of the death penalty but without success.source

19th century

184822 April – Treason Felony Act passed, reducing certain categories of capital high treason to felony punishable by penal transportation.source
1861August 27 – Martin Doyle is the last person executed in Britain for attempted murder.source
186127 August – last execution in Britain for attempted murder – Martin Doyle in Chester.source
1865November 10 – Captain Henry Wirz, Confederate superintendent of Andersonville Prison (Camp Sumter) is hanged, becoming the second of two combatants, and only serving regular soldier, to be executed for war crimes committed during the American Civil War.source
1890August 6 – At Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair.source

20th century

1901October 29 – Leon Czolgosz is executed in the electric chair for the assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, New York on September 6.source
1937January 30 – The Moscow Trial initiated on January 23 is concluded. Thirteen of the defendants are sentenced to death (including Georgy Pyatakov, Nikolay Muralov and Leonid Serebryakov), while the rest, including Karl Radek and Grigory Sokolnikov are sent to labor camps and later murdered. They were initially spared for implicating others, including Rykov, Bukharin and Tukhachevsky, setting the stage for further trialssource
196120 December - The last legal execution in Ireland occurs in Belfast - it is of Robert McGladdery for murder.source
197426 November - Capital punishment is formally abolished.source
1999April 5 – In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleads guilty to kidnapping and felony murder, in order to avoid a possible death penalty conviction for the apparent hate crime killing of Matthew Shepard.source