Death penalty in the context of "Outlaw"

Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy.

Heresy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has at times been met with censure ranging from excommunication to the death penalty.

Draco (fl. c. 625 – c. 600 BC) was the first legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece, according to Athenian tradition. He replaced the system of oral law and blood feud by the Draconian constitution, a written code to be enforced only by a court of law. His laws were supposed to have been very harsh, establishing the death penalty for most offenses. Tradition held that all of his laws were repealed by Solon, save for those on homicide. An inscription from 409/8 BC contains part of the current law and refers to it as "the law of Draco about homicide". Nothing is known about the specifics of other laws established by Draco.

According to some scholars, Draco may have been a fictional figure, entirely or in part. Biographical information about him is almost entirely lacking; he was held to have established his legal code in the year 621/620 BC. Since the 18th century, the adjective draconian (δρακόντειος, drakónteios) refers to similarly unforgiving rules or laws.
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Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), when he destroyed a pagan temple for the purpose of constructing a Christian church. Rome had periodically confiscated church properties, and Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming them whenever these issues were brought to his attention. Christian historians alleged that Hadrian (2nd century) had constructed a temple to Venus on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Christian veneration there. Constantine used that to justify the temple's destruction, saying he was simply reclaiming the property. Using the vocabulary of reclamation, Constantine acquired several more sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land.

From 313, with the exception of the brief reign of Julian, non-Christians were subject to a variety of hostile and discriminatory imperial laws aimed at suppressing sacrifice and magic and closing any temples that continued their use. The majority of these laws were local, though some were thought to be valid across the whole empire, with some threatening the death penalty, but not resulting in action. None seem to have been effectively applied empire-wide. For example, in 341, Constantine's son Constantius II enacted legislation forbidding pagan sacrifices in Roman Italy. In 356, he issued two more laws forbidding sacrifice and the worship of images, making them capital crimes, as well as ordering the closing of all temples. There is no evidence of the death penalty being carried out for illegal sacrifices before Tiberius Constantine (r. 578–582), and most temples remained open into the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565). Pagan teachers (who included philosophers) were banned and their license, parrhesia, to instruct others was withdrawn. Parrhesia had been used for a thousand years to denote "freedom of speech." Despite official threats, sporadic mob violence, and confiscations of temple treasures, paganism remained widespread into the early fifth century, continuing in parts of the empire into the seventh century, and into the ninth century in Greece. During the reigns of Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I anti-pagan policies and their penalties increased.

Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio (Italian: [ˈtʃeːzare bekkaˈriːa, ˈtʃɛː-]; 15 March 1738 – 28 November 1794) was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist, and politician who is widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. He is well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the classical school of criminology. Beccaria is considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice.

According to John Bessler, Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Karl Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945) was a German jurist, judge, and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1935 to 1942 and as president of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945. As a prominent ideologist of Nazism, he influenced as a jurist the Nazification of the German legal system. He was appointed president of the People's Court in 1942, overseeing the prosecution of political crimes as a judge. Freisler became known for his aggressive personality, his humiliation of defendants, and his frequent use of the death penalty in sentencing.

A law student at Kiel University, Freisler joined the Imperial German Army on the outbreak of the First World War and saw action on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded and taken prisoner of war by the Imperial Russian Army. On his return to Germany, he completed his law studies at the University of Jena and was awarded a Doctorate of Law in 1922. Freisler joined the Nazi Party in 1925, upon which he began defending Party members in court for acts of political violence.

Death row phenomenon is the emotional distress felt by prisoners on death row. Concerns about the ethics of inflicting this distress upon prisoners have led to some legal concerns about the constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States and other countries. In relation to the use of solitary confinement with death row inmates, death row phenomenon and death row syndrome are two concepts that are gaining recognition. Death row phenomenon is the harmful effect of death row conditions, while death row syndrome is the manifestation of psychological illness that can occur as a result.