Talk:Capital punishment

Requested move 1 April 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. There is a consensus that "death penalty" is more prevalent in sources than "capital punishment", but there's quite a bit of concern that "death penalty" doesn't precisely describe the scope of the article, and given the numerical split that means there's no consensus to move. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:39, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

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Capital punishment → Death penalty – Google ngram indicates a higher appearance of "Death penalty" over "Capital punishment". Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 14:20, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. One argument against this move in previous RMs was that "capital punishment" is supposedly a more scholarly term, but even searching articles on JSTOR ("capital punishment" vs. "death penalty") or Google Scholar ("capital punishment" vs. "death penalty") gives more results for "death penalty". (This is also the case when filtering by articles since 2000 or 2020.) Death penalty is also the more self-explanatory term/plain language; while I would hope most people know what "capital punishment" means, it's most likely that somewhat fewer do than "death penalty" (and some may confuse "capital" and "corporal"). SilverLocust 💬 17:04, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

  Many of the sources you've listed explain the difference. The first Source listed for me says ..."Death penalty" applies to a prisoner who has been sentenced to die, but has not yet been executed; "capital punishment" refers to his actual execution....Moxy🍁 00:44, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  Even when/if distinguishing the two terms as meaning "death sentence" (death penalty) and "enforcement of a death sentence" (capital punishment), I don't see why that makes the latter a more suitable title for an article that covers either topic. Absent a split of death penalty to a separate article, this article would be an appropriate place (under either title) to cover both the enforcement of death sentences and the lack of (immediate) enforcement of death sentences that are officially authorized. SilverLocust 💬 04:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per Britannica. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:55, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

  Wikipedia isn’t just another encyclopedia, it can be different. DirtySocks357(WreckItRalph) (talk) 21:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

  @DirtySocks357(WreckItRalph) response to opposition. There is a logical fallacy to state that something should be done because that is how it has been done such as in the Britannica encyclopedia. Or, if your comment was suggesting that Wikipedia is different that other encyclopedias, then similarly that isn't a logical argument for or against the article name change either. At best, it would be a straw man argument, but since it's non-sequitur I'm not sure it can even be considered that. eximo (talk) 00:01, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  @eximo ah, thank you. DS537(WIR) 12:33, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose for the same reasons as back in 2019. Current title is consistent with other articles, as Marianna251 showed, and is more versatile generally. Srnec (talk) 20:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

  As I noted above, Google Scholar shows the opposite of what Marianna251 said it showed in 2019. (She didn't provide a link there.) There's 300,000 more results for death penalty. Second, it was incorrect to claim WP:COMMONNAME is irrelevant between the #1 and #2 most common terms. And it's just incorrect to say "death penalty" is presently a POV term, as though AEDPA were some anti–death penalty law. SilverLocust 💬 21:58, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Wikipedia policy (as expressed, for example, in WP:JARGON and WP:MTAU) is to make articles (and their titles) understandable to as broad a readership as possible. The summary of MTAU says: "Strive to make each part of every article as understandable as possible to the widest audience of readers who are likely to be interested in that material." Although both capital punishment and death penalty are widely understood, the former term seems to be getting less common over time and yielding to the latter term, which is direct, straightforward, and understandable to schoolchildren, which capital punishment may or may not be. The word capital does not commonly mean "resulting in death" except when talking about the death penalty, and so that meaning of the word is archaic except as a technical legal term (although a widely recognized one).

As far as consistency with the titles of subsidiary articles is concerned, if there's a consensus for changing the main article title to "Death penalty", it will not be hard to carry that over to quickly approve the same change in wording of the titles in the related articles. NightHeron (talk) 22:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

it will not be hard to carry that over to quickly approve the same change in wording of the titles in the related articles. I think history shows otherwise. If the other articles should be moved also, this should be a multi-move. People might not like moving List of methods of capital punishment or all the "Capital punishment in ..." articles. Srnec (talk) 00:39, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• Opposed ....as per many pervious talk ""Death penalty" applies to a prisoner who has been sentenced to die, but has not yet been executed; "capital punishment" refers to his actual execution." The death penalty is a sentence capital punishment is the execution of that sentence..Banu Bargu (2014). Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons. Columbia University Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-231-53811-4.Moxy🍁 00:28, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense. A "capital offense" or "capital crime" is one where the death penalty can be sought by the prosecutor and eventually carried out, but in many cases isn't. AFAIK people commonly use the two terms "capital punishment" and "death penalty" interchangeably. NightHeron (talk) 01:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Many people are sentenced to death but it does not mean that the act of capital punishment is always carried out. Capital punishment refers to the process of carrying out the death sentence......Reichel, Philip L. (2022-12-21). "Death Penalty and Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.626. ISBN 978-0-19-026407-9. Moxy🍁 01:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support per the well reasoned common name argument. If the move passes, other articles should be renamed to match this one, obviating the consistency argument. Regardless of the exact semantics, surely the article scope also covers cases where a death sentence is issued but stayed/moratorium/commuted etc. (t · c) buidhe 01:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Buidhe. I support this argument, the fact that other pages may reference capital punishment vs. the death penalty does not confer a rightness or wrongness to the correct naming of the article. If every link in Wikipedia was incorrect, it shouldn't change the balance of the naming of the article to it's correct name. The ability to change the other articles names does obviate the consistency argument by eviscerating it's foundational premise. eximo (talk) 00:08, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Solution in search of a problem. Both are commonly used. "Death penalty" tends to be more populist and used in debates about its use. "Capital punishment" tends to be used when referring to the punishment itself. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:01, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support. It's the COMMONNAME, as has been shown, and per common sense. Any argument that there is some kind of difference between the two terms is not following common usage in reliable sources or this article. Dictionaries list them as synonyms of one another. --Jfhutson (talk) 18:00, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
• Support as the common name and would be more recognizable to readers. DirtySocks357(WreckItRalph) (talk) 21:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Malerisch (talk) 07:37, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Oppose per @Moxy, see death penalty vs capital punishment from wiktionary:

-Death Penalty: A punishment in which the offender is put to death by the state

-Capital Punishment: The practice of putting a person to death as a punishment for a crime. 🇺🇲JayCubby✡ please edit my user page! Talk 15:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

ASUKITE 16:56, 18 April 2024 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE

These do not line up with Moxy's definitions. A punishment is not a judicial sentence, but an act, just like a practice. Each of these lists the other as a synonym in the Wiktionary (which is not a reliable source anyway). What would be the difference between encyclopedia articles on the death penalty and capital punishment? -- JFHutson (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jfhutson I feel that the article should be on the practice of doing something, in this case executing prisoners, rather than simply sentencing them. See also Britannica. 🇺🇲JayCubby✡ please edit my user page! Talk 16:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the Britannica is being very precise with "sometimes used interchangeably;" I think it's usually or almost always used interchangeably. For example, this passage from our article is clearly talking about execution and uses "death penalty": "However, a spike in serious, violent crimes, such as murders or terrorist attacks, has prompted some countries to effectively end the moratorium on the death penalty. One notable example is Pakistan which in December 2014 lifted a six-year moratorium on executions..." But regardless, most of the article is on the penalty in general, the topic of which of course includes execution, and I think that's what people expect from this article, whether it's called capital punishment or death penalty. The sections on "Methods," "Public execution," and "Non-painful execution" are more properly about the practice of execution. -- JFHutson (talk) 16:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Just like marijuana versus hashish we have different definitions for statistics and academic purposes. The Bureau of Justice (USA) Capital punishment refers to the process of sentencing convicted offenders to death for the most serious crimes (capital crimes) and carrying out that sentence. (My Bolding). Moxy🍁 22:22, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

• Comment/weak oppose: I just spent half an hour in Westlaw to see if I could find any differences in the way these terms are used, as I think that is a more important question than google searches (this doesn't mean we should move 'oranges'). While the two terms are often used interchangeably, there is some nuance to the definitions. Capital punishment is generally defined as the act itself:

  Garland focuses on more than capital punishment, which he defines as "a practice whereby a properly constituted authority puts to death a convicted offender in punishment for a crime" ...

  — David T. Johnson, American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective, 36 Law & Soc. Inquiry 1033, 1035 (2011)

  "Death penalty" is more often used to refer to the legal decision made by the judge/jury, the laws surrounding, and any legislative acts allowing/barring the punishment. E.g., "death penalty jurisprudence" appears nearly four times as often in secondary sources as "capital punishment jurisprudence". "Death penalty statute" beats out "capital punishment statute" by nearly the exact same ratio in secondary sources. I don't have a strong feeling about this, but legally they might refer to different things. In our article, we've kind of mixed the two terms right from the start: Capital punishment ... is the state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime, usually following an authorised, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The first bold would be capital punishment, the second the death penalty. Do we care about that? Should we separate those two things out further? I'm leaning oppose because I think it makes more sense here for the umbrella term here to be the punishment, not the legal regime that makes the punishment possible, but there might not be enough distinction in substance for other editors. Regardless, I think that's the issue we should be weighing. Alyo (chat·edits) 16:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. NelsonLee20042020 (talk) 11:54, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose: Capital punishment is more correct. Tad Lincoln (talk) 22:25, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  it was not necessarily correct but they are the same, and death penalty is a more commonly used term instead of capital punishment NelsonLee20042020 (talk) 23:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. They're not exactly the same thing. StAnselm (talk) 14:03, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  they are definitely the same. NelsonLee20042020 (talk) 23:41, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: They are different things. Death penalty is capital punishment's application, whereas capital punishment (the word punishment is in noun form) refers to the legal concept itself. The latter is what the article is about. UmbrellaTheLeef (talk) 00:13, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

  Correction: I said "noun" when I meant "uncountable". I know that punishment is never anything but a noun. UmbrellaTheLeef (talk) 00:25, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Philosophy, WikiProject Law Enforcement, WikiProject Death, WikiProject Law, WikiProject Human rights, WikiProject Correction and Detention Facilities, INACTIVEWP, WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard, WikiProject United States Government, WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement, and WikiProject United States have been notified of this discussion. RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Oppose per @Alyo's well-reasoned argument. This article is about capital punishment, not the death penalty. WP:COMMONNAME says that we should go by what reliable sources say, and reliable sources define the terms differently. The fact that one or the other might have more Google search results is irrelevant since they're different things. voorts (talk/contributions) 04:31, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Penalty and punishment have ultimately the same etymological root and dictionaries naturally mention one term when defining the other. That doesn't mean that the existence of different words is a linguistic dead-end and that there is no difference between the words or the various phrases that employ them. WP:COMMONNAME does not condemn Wikipedia to using a restricted vocabulary; that would be, if not quite a death penalty for the encylopedia, cruel punishment for our hubristic endeavour. NebY (talk) 17:27, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support I have read all of the arguments above. The only two arguments that I see that are based on a logical premise are: 1. The WP:COMMONNAME arguments which state that the page should use the most common of the terms that describe the contents of the article. 2.The distinction between the dictionary descriptions of Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty "Capital punishment ... is the state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime, usually following an authorised, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment."

The argument has been made that the public and the article co-mingle the two terms, and use them interchangeably, which means that they are not WP:CONCISE to the detriment of the quality of the article. This can be remedied through editing and so the argument is obviated by the ability to correct the comingling or lack of concise usage. Whichever term is used, the article should make it clear of the differences to the reader of the usage and differences between the two terms and their application.

I support the move perhaps for unlogical and unscholarly ideological reasons, that the term Death Penalty is much more severe and not a euphemism for the decision to kill a person. :Thus, electing to use Death Penalty connects to the minds of the readers in an important psychologically present way that the alternative vernacular use of Capital Punishment. I also admit that I am not impartial on the matter, I exhibit an implicit and explicit bias to use the term that causes the reader/pubic a greater aversion to the death penalty.eximo (talk) 00:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• Um, came here thinking I'd support, but arguments have me on the fence. Might be subtly separate topics, with "death penalty" being more useable for extrajudicial killings as well and more applicable to animal executions as well. Hyperbolick (talk) 07:58, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Possible Edits and Source suggestions

In "History - China"

Some further forms of capital punishment were practiced in the Tang dynasty, of which the first two that follow at least were extralegal.^{[clarification needed]} The first of these was scourging to death with the thick rod^{[clarification needed]} which was common throughout the Tang dynasty especially in cases of gross corruption.

found a couple sources that would help with clarification.

http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/penal_zhang.html

Includes a source on the bottom too

Pu Jian 蒲堅 (1992). "Zhang 杖", in Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中国大百科全书, Faxue 法学 (Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe), 740.

In "Public Executions"The last formal public executions occurred in 1868 in Britain, in 1936 in the U.S. and in 1939 in France.

Possible expand the information to include instances of these public executions. For example France ended formal Public executions due the unruly crowd delaying the execution and causing a massive disturbance. As a result, the French President immediately banned public executions the following day.

Mentioned in another Wikipedia article - Guillotine#France but with no citation.

Possible citation, but not the best. Maybe find the direct publication by Paris-Soir?

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-public-execution-guillotine-1939/ Flavorless Fideos (talk) 08:59, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 April 2024

Add Syria to the list of countries with the death penalty in practice in the third paragraph. J.S Claude (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. This is not meant to be a complete list (which would include over 100 countries and be unreadable), it is just a few notable examples. Its unclear what the addition of Syria would clarify. Jamedeus (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 June 2024

There is 27 out states in America that that still have death penalty which is over half of the country so to say that most states have abolished it is not factually correct 81.108.217.142 (talk) 02:42, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

The sentence says "the Americas" (as in North and South America), not "America" (as in the United States of America), and so means "states" as in sovereign states (countries), not states as in divisions within a country. I've changed "states" in that sentence to "countries" to make sure there is no confusion. Tollens (talk) 02:59, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Who would equate a relatively small country like the United States with the Americas? Dimadick (talk) 10:24, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Add US in retentionist countries example list?

It seems incomprehensible to me why the USA (as one of the biggest and most important country in the world) ist not mentioned in the exemplary listing of retentionist countries but much smaller countries like Singapore or Taiwan are. Any rationale for that?

“China, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Taiwan.“ Ginovino (talk) 22:19, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

It gets added and then removed then added back and then removed again...... it's an embarrassment and some can't handle it. Will ask for some other opinions on best way to handle it. Moxy🍁 22:35, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The US should definitely be there. Before non-retentionist countries agree to extradite someone to the US for what the US regards as a capital offense, they typically require a guarantee that the prosecutor will not seek the death penalty. Note that the US is an outlier among the wealthy countries. NightHeron (talk) 00:46, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

If we have consensus, then we have consensus. The only thing I would note is that the US and Japan are listed as retentionist countries in the first sentence in the paragraph, so one could argue it's duplicative/implied. Alyo (chat·edits) 13:56, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Since the list comes right after mentioning that 60% of the world's population lives in retentionist countries, the list should include more of the large-population countries (including the US and Japan) and perhaps fewer of the smaller-population countries such as Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan (these each have <40 million population). NightHeron (talk) 14:24, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Noting my caveat about the first sentence, I agree and certainly would add in the US. It might be worth keeping some of the smaller countries who have had particularly noteworthy public debates about their death penalty use (e.g., Singapore [1] and Saudi). Alyo (chat·edits) 15:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I'd suggest beginning with the largest by population size, in order (maybe no need to make that explicit, even though WP:BLUE would apply): China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria ... NebY (talk) 16:21, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Map on Contemporary Use not Colourblind friendly

The map on Contemporary Use highlights the different countries with varying colours between green and red, which is not a Colourblind friendly colourscheme. I propose that someone could change it to a better colour scheme :-) Jolanda.mueller (talk) 09:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)