Capital Punishment in Romania - Antecedents

Antecedents

The death penalty has a long and varied history in present-day Romania. Vlad III the Impaler (reigned in Wallachia, principally 1456–62) was notorious for executing thousands by impalement. One of his successors, Constantine Hangerli, was strangled, shot, stabbed and beheaded by the Ottomans in 1799. In the Wallachian capital Bucharest, men condemned for theft, counterfeiting, treason, for being pretenders or haiduks, their sentence hanging around their necks, would be taken in oxcarts from Curtea Veche along Calea Moşilor (then called Podul Târgului de Afară, or "Bridge of the Outside Market") to the marketplace in question. The bodies of the hanged would be left in place for a long period as food for crows. Anton Maria Del Chiaro, writing in 1718, noted that at every tavern along the way, the women inside would emerge with cups of wine, asking the man to drink deeply so he would not be afraid to die. If his mother or wife accompanied him, they too would urge him to drink, and at the time of hanging he would be dizzy and unaware of what was happening. The public marketplace executions were banned by Grigore IV Ghica (1822-1828). Two of the leaders of the Revolt of Horea, Cloşca and Crişan were broken on the wheel by the Imperial Austrian authorities (who then controlled Transylvania) in 1785. And Liviu Rebreanu's 1922 novel Pădurea spânzuraţilor ("Forest of the Hanged"), as well as its 1965 film adaptation, draws upon the experience of his brother Emil, hanged for desertion in 1917, shortly before Austria-Hungary dissolved and Transylvania united with Romania.