Capital punishment in Ireland
Capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland was abolished in statute law in 1990, having been abolished in 1964 for most offences including ordinary murder. The last person to be executed by the British state in Ireland was Robert McGladdery, who was hanged on 20 December 1961 in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The last person to be executed by the state in the Republic of Ireland was Michael Manning, hanged for murder on 20 April 1954. All subsequent death sentences in the Republic of Ireland, the last handed down in 1985, were commuted by the President, on the advice of the Government, to terms of imprisonment of up to 40 years. The Twenty-first Amendment of the constitution, passed by referendum in 2001, prohibits the reintroduction of the death penalty, even during a state of emergency or war. Capital punishment is also forbidden by several human rights treaties to which the state is a party. Early history Early Irish law discouraged capital punishment. Murder was usually punished with two types of fine: a fixed éraic and a variable Log nEnech; a murderer was only killed if he and his relatives could not pay the fine. The Senchas Már'''s description of the execution of the murderer of Saint Patrick's charioteer Odran has been interpreted as a failed attempt to replace restorative justice with retributive justice. After the Norman conquest of Ireland, English law provided the model for Irish law. This originally mandated a death sentence for any felony, a class of crimes established by common law but, in Ireland as in England, was extended by various Acts of Parliament; a situation later dubbed the "Bloody Code". After the Irish Reformation, the Protestant Ascendancy to impede Roman Catholic practices passed Penal Laws, some of which created capital crimes which produced Irish Catholic Martyrs. The gallows speech was a popular genre of broadside from the Williamite revolution through the eighteenth century, feeding into popular ballads of the nineteenth century. In 1789 Elizabeth Sugrue ("Lady Betty") was among 26 led to the County Roscommon gallows; when the hangman failed to appear, she agreed to hang the other 25 if the sheriff would stay her own execution. She remained county executioner until 1802, when her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Most Penal Laws were repealed or disused by the late 18th century. As late as 1834 the officiant at an unlicensed Catholic–Protestant marriage was sentenced to death, albeit commuted to 18 months' imprisonment. The Criminal Law Act 1827 allowed judges to sentence to transportation for many hitherto capital crimes. For more, Peel's Acts in 1828 replaced the death penalty with penal servitude. The Capital Punishment (Ireland) Act 1842 brought the law in Ireland closer to that of England by reducing the penalties for numerous offences, and abolishing the capital crime of serving in the army or navy of France. The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 reduced the number of capital crimes from over two hundred to just three: murder, treason