Capital punishment in Ireland

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;[4] a situation later dubbed the "Bloody Code".

[5] 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.

The Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, was enacted during the Land War and introduced on the day of the funeral of Lord Frederick Cavendish, one of the Phoenix Park murder victims.

[12] This empowered non-jury trials to impose death sentences, prompting Francis Alexander FitzGerald to resign in protest as baron of the exchequer.

[21][29] In the absence of a local executioner, the Irish government retained the pre-independence custom of having a British hangman come to Mountjoy Prison to perform executions.

[33] Of these, Maurice O'Neill (Irish republican) and Richard Goss had shot but not killed Gardaí: the only people executed by the state for a non-murder crime.

[49] The military court operating during the Emergency of the Second World War was required to impose a sentence of "death by shooting", from which there was no appeal, although commutation was possible.

[50] The crimes in its remit were: committing, "attempting or conspiring to commit, or aiding, abetting counselling or procuring the commission" of the following:— treason; murder; wounding while resisting arrest; unlawful imprisonment; causing an explosion; unlawful possession of explosives, firearms, or ammunition; damaging equipment of the Defence Forces or "essential services"; and "obtaining, recording, or communicating in any manner likely to prejudice the public safety or the preservation of the State of any information directly or indirectly prejudicial to the State".

[56] The Criminal Justice Act 1951, in conformance with Article 13.6 of the Constitution, explicitly excluded capital cases from those to which the Government was granted the power to commute sentences.

"[19] The Criminal Justice Act 1964 abolished the death penalty for piracy with violence, some military crimes, Geneva Conventions breaches, and most murders.

[77] Criminology professor Ian O'Donnell wrote in 2016 that murderers with commuted death sentences "were released after periods of time that would be considered absurdly short today".

Before kidnapped businessman Tiede Herrema's 1975 rescue, The Irish Times reported government suggestions that his threatened killing by the IRA would be "furthering the activities of an unlawful organisation" and hence capital murder.

The state refused to grant the standard remission of sentences due for good behaviour, which would make them eligible for parole after 30 years.

[111] After the general election in June 1981, the Fine Gael–Labour coalition introduced a bill in the Seanad to abolish the death penalty for treason and capital murder, which passed there but had not reached the Dáil when the government fell in January 1982.

[114] A 1986 Department of Foreign Affairs briefing made public in 2017 said:[115] The death penalty in this country is largely a quaint throwback to the days when everyone else had one.

That being said, the abolition of the death penalty would represent a strong political minus in the eyes of certain right-wing groupings, including the gardaí, the RUC and the DUP.

[118] Ireland's 1989 ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), effective 8 March 1990, made a reservation to Article 6(5).

The Article reads "Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women.

"[119] The Irish government's declaration read "Pending the introduction of further legislation to give full effect to the provisions of paragraph 5 of Article 6, should a case arise which is not covered by the provisions of existing law, the Government of Ireland will have regard to its obligations under the Covenant in the exercise of its power to advise commutation of the sentence of death.

"[120] The legislation referred to was the Child Care Bill 1988,[121] which became law in 1991;[122] a section was to have been included to raise from 17 to 18 the minimum age for the death penalty.

[121] In May 1989, Fianna Fáil minister Michael Woods stated:[123] I appreciate that there is support for the abolition of the death penalty and, in more normal times, I accept that there would be merit in a full and open debate on the pros and cons of such a move.

It would remove the additional protection which the death penalty provides for members of the Garda Síochána and the Prison Service, who are especially at risk from violent criminals, some of whom have been murdered in the execution of their duty.

After the June 1989 general election, Fianna Fáil formed a coalition with the PDs; the agreed programme for government included abolishing the death penalty in Ireland.

[129][n 2] In 1993, the then Tánaiste, Dick Spring, said in Vienna that the 1990 abolition should be made irreversible, which Taoiseach Albert Reynolds later confirmed was government policy and would involve a constitutional amendment.

[136] The 38% no-vote was higher than the 28% predicted by polls; there were suggestions that the wording of the ballot question was confusing and that some voters were expressing dissatisfaction with the government.

[144] As of 17 May 2024[update],[145] the last scientific opinion poll of Irish support for the death penalty was an international survey in 2000, in which Ireland ranked third lowest of 59 countries at 17%.

[145][146] Doyle and O'Callaghan comment: "This does not imply widespread active popular opposition to the death penalty in Ireland, but there was, at least, a great deal of indifference to it and very little desire to see it ever reintroduced".

In November 2009, Richard Johnson, recently retired as President of the High Court, said that he favoured reintroduction of the death penalty in limited circumstances, such as murder committed during armed robberies.

[148] At the January 2010 meeting of the Mid-West Regional Authority, two members of Clare County Council called for "a public debate" on the death penalty.

[152] Kevin Sharkey, seeking to run in the 2018 Irish presidential election, supported the death penalty for home invasions on the elderly.