Capital punishment in Serbia

In the first decades of the 19th century, the death penalty was widely used in Serbia for a variety of offenses: murder, theft, political crimes, infanticide and even for extramarital sexual relations.

Until 1858, different modes of execution were in use: shooting, hanging, breaking on the wheel, „lethal gauntlet“ (a double file of men facing each other and armed with birch rods with which to strike at a person who is made to run between them) and decapitation; in the very beginning, there were a few instances of impalement.

In addition, the bodies of executed offenders were almost always publicly displayed on wheels and kept there for a set period of time or until „complete decay“.

The Code included sixteen capital offenses: various forms of murder and robbery leading to death, as well as treason.

In the north-western provinces (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Vojvodina), executions were by hanging in an enclosed space with restricted public attendance.

In addition to political offenses, capital crimes included the theft of the government property, as well as aggravated murder and robbery.

Hanging was abolished and the only legal mode of execution remained shooting, performed by a platoon of eight policemen, only half of whom had rifles loaded with live ammunition.

In 1826, poet Sima Milutinović Sarajlija (1791–1847) wrote to Prince Miloš Obrenović, advising him to abolish the death penalty.

[9] During the drafting of the Penal Code in 1858, a law professor and a judge Jovan Filipović (1819–1876) proposed an abolition of capital punishment, arguing that it was unconstitutional under the then Serbian constitution.

[10] In January 1881, deputies of the People's Radical Party made two motions to completely abolish the death penalty in the Serbian Parliament, but both were rejected by a majority vote.

[11] A committee appointed to draft a new constitution for Serbia in 1888 held a debate on the death penalty, but the motion to abolish it was rejected.

[citation needed] In 1980, a Belgrade lawyer Srđa M. Popović submitted a petition to the Yugoslav authorities to abolish the death penalty.

In 1983, more than a thousand Yugoslav citizens, mostly from Slovenia, signed a petition to the federal parliament calling for an abolition of capital punishment.

On 26 February 2002, the Serbian parliament amended Serbia's Penal Code by deleting from it all references to capital punishment.

As was stressed in the parliamentary debate, a paramount motive for this abolition was the intention of the then FR Yugoslavia to join the Council of Europe.

Those for and those against capital punishment remain equally divided with minor year-to-year variations, like a seesaw: one year a majority of a few per cent would be for, and the next against the death penalty (see Table below).