I’m sure people will a few opinions about this… Under US law as it stands today, what is the least heinous crime you can be sentanced to death for? (Perhaps Treason?) And how about in the world?
How about in history? Anyone ever get executed for picking thier nose?
It often results in the death of foreign agents, for example, compromises national security, and could in fact lose a war.
Horse stealing would be another “good” guess, problem being that in the past it was next to impossible to lock anything up, so thieves were not well tolerated. It may seem simple or trite today, but a stolen horse was serious business in that time period.
It’s a big mistake, albeit common, to judge people in the past by the morality of today.
People used to get executed for committing just about any serious crime, murder, armed robbery, rape. If you didn’t get executed, you were given some sort of nasty corporal punishment, flogging being quite popular. The concept of imprisoning people didn’t really take hold until the 19th Century in Europe and the US.
According to a post in another (quite recent) thread about the death penalty, you can be executed in Florida for drug trafficking.
In 1536, William Tyndale was executed by strangulation and his dead body burned at the stake for the crime of publishing a Bible in English. (All Bibles were supposed to be in Latin.)
Death penalty for preaching Christianity, Afghanistan, 2001:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1496000/1496013.stm
(Strictly IMHO, but treason seems to be most often (ab)used by those in power to keep their subjects in line and/or to increase their personal security, rather than for purely national security reasons. E.g. by certain past English/British/French monarchs; Stalin, Beria and the like; Joe McCarthy &cetera.)
Based on conviction rates and recent DNA evidence overturning convictions, I’d say the least crime you can be executed for is:
= Being in the wrong place at the wrong time (so as to be “identified” by eye-witnesses) and having the wrong skin colour.
In ancient Athens they asked a bloke named Draco to draft a new code of law. He mandated capital punishment for crimes like stealing an apple off a fruit stand. The Athenians regretted having asked him, but this did add the word draconian to the language.
In England under Cromwell it was made a capital offense to swear at one’s parents.
I’m a bit suspicious about this one. At various points during the 1640s and 1650s Parliament legislated against swearing, but only the most serious forms of blasphemy carried the death penalty and swearing at one’s parents doesn’t appear to have been a separate offence.
The silly example of a crime in English law which once carried the death penalty and which is always cited in such discussions was impersonation of a Chelsea Pensioner. Its abolition invariably gets a mention in the section on law reform in school textbooks on early-nineteenth century British history. I have never seen any evidence that anyone was ever executed for doing so.
You can be executed federally for drug trafficking (and a few other non-homicide crimes).
Although there are other crimes that can potentially carry the death penalty in the U.S., all the people on death row here have been convicted of murder, except one (as far as I know). One man in Louisiana was sentenced to die after being convicted of raping a child.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for raping an adult (Coker v. Georgia). They left open the possibility that the death penalty might be constitutional for the rape of a child. I think there is a good chance this Louisiana case to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the sentence overturned.
Other U.S. Supreme Court cases have held it unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for such crimes as kidnapping, attempted murder, and accessory to murder. Capital Punishment Handbook
According to information I got from a site referenced on another post, “Apostacy” is a capital offence in a number of Islamic countries. This evidently means switching religions to something other than Islam. In the Sudan, it is apparently punishable by crucifixion. The site says that more than half the government-sanctioned executions in 1998 were crucifixions.
I believe some Islamic countries also can pass the death sentence for “Obscene Acts” such as a woman wearing trousers.
I recall reading in the Newgate Calendar that a man in early 19th Century England was sentenced to hang for stealing a postage stamp. This was commuted to transportation.
“Strictly IMHO, but treason seems to be most often (ab)used by those in power to keep their subjects in line and/or to increase their personal security, rather than for purely national security reasons. E.g. by certain past English/British/French monarchs; Stalin, Beria and the like; Joe McCarthy &cetera.)”
The Founding Fathers apparently agreed with you, because treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution (specifically, Article III, Sec. 3, par. 1), limited to “levying war against [the United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” The same provision also requires that for a conviction there must be two witnesses to the same overt act of treason or a confession in open court.
Because it’s so hard to prove, I don’t think the McCarthy Red-baiting thing involved many, if any, formal accusations of treason.
It seems strange to me that, for the most part, people place a crime such as drug trafficking below homicide on the seriousness scale. It’s happening on this thread. I’m not sure it deserves to be ranked there automatically. In most cases, I think drug trafficking is at least as bad as homicide, and sometimes even worse. It spreads vice throughout communities, leading to further crime.
Alright, I’m done. I hope hijacking GQ threads isn’t a capital offense. 
Well…here’s a good one I suppose.
There’s something called the Felony Murder Rule. The FMR is a rule established to prosecute certain people more severely than others. If you killed someone (even accidentally) while in the process of committing a felony, that homicide was automatically bumped up to 1st degree murder.
Robbing someone’s house and you drop your gun, it fires and the bullet ricochets off the wall, hits a lamp which tips over and electrocutes the owner? 1st degree murder, baby.
Now, as it was originally designed, there were only 7 felonies it incorporated. Sodomy was one of them. Sooooo…theoretically, if you anally screw someone to death, that could be the end of it for you too. Nowadays, the felony must be violent in nature to qualify under the FMR. But, since some states do still have sodomy as an offense, it may also be considered violent in nature.
Whether anyone has actually been killed, either through anal sex or through the FMR of sodomy, I have no idea. I’m afraid to research it.
Reading this thread led me to run down an urban legend I once heard.
Supposedly, there was a law on the Texas books, never formally removed, which provides for the death penalty if a person is found to be in possession of wire cutters. It was a law designed to deter cattle rustlers.
I’ve searched Snopes, Cecil, Google, and the Texas state statutes and found nothing to support this.
Enderw24, felony murder can get even more interesting. If you are robbing a bank with a gun, and one of the customers has a heart attack and dies during your robbery…
Yep, you guessed it- a lovely enhancement to your already serious (but up until that point, non-death-penalty) crime.
I don’t think that there are any silly death penalty crimes currently in the US, and some in other countries seem silly to us because our belief systems are different. Treason, rape of a child, 1st degree murder, felony murder, some specific instances of drug trafficking- I’m ok with all of these so far.
Of course, when was the last time the US executed someone convicted of treason? Not recently. Most people convicted of treason spend the rest of their natural lives in a cell, cooperating with the authorities.
I believe the Taliban pushes walls over on homosexuals. I can’t think of anything less serious of an offense than being homosexual, so that’s got my vote.
I think that would be the Rosenbergs, but I’m not sure wether they were the last, or whether they were convicted of treason or espionage.
I don’t know if it was actually enacted into law by the Commonwealth, but that would be in line with Exodus 21:17:
See also Leviticus 20:19.
The U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice can be pretty strict, especially in wartime. Such traditional military crimes as being drunk or sleeping while on sentry duty (“misbehavior of sentinel”) and assaulting or wifully disobeying a superior officer can be capital offenses in time of war. There was an earlier GQ thread about non-murder death penalty offenses; there are several posts enumerating non-murder capital offenses in the United States.
I know we’re not talking about the detterance factor of capital punishment, but this is interesting:
England used to hang pickpockets in public. Working the crowds on these occassions were…pickpockets.