Abolitionist State
Definition
A country that has removed capital punishment from its law for all crimes, or that retains it in law but has not carried out an execution for a sustained period and is treated as abolitionist in practice.
Related terms
- Death Penalty
- A sentence of execution imposed by a court for an offence the law classifies as capital, carried out by an agent of...
- Deterrence Hypothesis
- The claim that the threat or use of execution reduces the rate of capital crime below what it would be under a...
- Rarest of Rare Doctrine
- The Indian Supreme Court's standard, set out in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980), that death may be imposed only when...
- Retentionist State
- A country whose law authorises capital punishment for at least one ordinary crime and that has not committed itself, in law or...
- Wrongful Conviction
- A conviction that is later determined to be factually incorrect, usually through post-conviction DNA testing or other newly available evidence. Bite mark...