Punishment
One of the criteria for a judgement of "murder in the first degree" in the laws of the State of New York is that:
...the defendant acted in an especially cruel and wanton manner pursuant to a course of conduct intended to inflict and inflicting torture upon the victim prior to the victim's death. As used in this subparagraph, "torture" means the intentional and depraved infliction of extreme physical pain; "depraved" means the defendant relished the infliction of extreme physical pain upon the victim evidencing debasement or perversion or that the defendant evidenced a sense of pleasure in the infliction of extreme physical pain...Similar positions are taken in the laws of Italy, Germany and Norway and others (see, Country-specific murder law).
Read more about this topic: Torture Murder
Famous quotes containing the word punishment:
“A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the Army that for some offence has been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most, with very little pay. I do not like this punishment of withholding pay—it falls so very hard upon poor families.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
To let the punishment fit the crime—
The punishment fit the crime;”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)