Capital Punishment in Australia

Capital Punishment In Australia

Capital punishment has been formally abolished in Australia. It was last used in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Victoria. Ryan was the last of 114 people executed in the 20th century and prior to his execution Queensland and New South Wales had already abolished the death penalty for murder. Brenda Hodge became the last person sentenced to death in August 1984. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and she was paroled in 1995. It was removed as a punishment for murder in all states by 1984 when the state of Western Australia abolished the death penalty for all crimes, and the next year NSW removed death as a possible punishment for treason, piracy and arson of naval dockyards.

Between Ryan's execution and 1984 occasional death sentences were passed in Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia, but were commuted to life imprisonment. In 2010 federal legislation prohibited capital punishment in all Australian states and territories.

Read more about Capital Punishment In Australia:  History, Public Opinion

Famous quotes containing the words capital, punishment and/or australia:

    We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.
    Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)

    It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.
    Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)