The Death Penalty in Hungary During the 20th Century

Abstract

Capital punishment is a controversial sanction that still exists today in many states. However, it has been abolished in more than two-thirds of countries, including Hungary. The last 100 years of its application in Hungary have been affected by changes in the political climate. These changes have resulted in different laws using this punishment in different ways. In this article, I compare the peaceful legislation on capital punishment in Hungary starting from the beginning of the 20th century. Throughout this comparison, I focus on three important aspects of this punishment: the crimes that were punishable by death, the means of execution, and other factors that had to be considered while issuing the death sentence, and finally, the practice of the courts. Based on this comparison, I drew a conclusion that aimed to present the dynamics of the analysed period. Accordingly, we can say that in the last 100 years of capital punishment in Hungary, some things like the means of execution have not changed significantly, but crimes that attracted the death penalty have changed frequently. After examining the conclusions of each analysed topic, we can conclude that capital punishment had a structure in which the start and end of the analysed period represented the ultima ratio nature of this punishment the most, and the periods in between were more distant from it.