Capital punishment in Romania
[2] In Moldavia, the earliest reference to executions is found in a 1646 text from the time of Vasile Lupu, while in Wallachia, a similar mention from 1652 dates to Matei Basarab's reign.
[3] In the Wallachian capital Bucharest, men condemned for theft, counterfeiting, treason, for being pretenders or haiduks, their sentence hanging around their necks, would be taken in oxcarts from Curtea Veche along Calea Moşilor (then called Podul Târgului de Afară, or "Bridge of the Outside Market") to the marketplace in question.
Anton Maria Del Chiaro, writing in 1718, noted that at every tavern along the way, the women inside would emerge with cups of wine, asking the man to drink deeply so he would not be afraid to die.
After the revolutions were crushed, the ruling princes maintained the death penalty: it is mentioned in the Penal Codes both of Wallachia's Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei and of Moldavia's Grigore Alexandru Ghica.
[6] The modern Romanian state was formed in 1859 after the unification of the Danubian Principalities, and a Penal Code was enacted in 1864 that did not provide for the death penalty except for several wartime offences.
[7] By the end of the 19th century, just six other European countries had abolished the death penalty: Belgium, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal,[8] as well as tiny Republic of San Marino.
[13] According to the military archives, between 1949 and 1963, largely corresponding with the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, 260 people were executed in Romania,[13] including Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Eugen Ţurcanu, the Ioanid Gang, Oliviu Beldeanu (the leader of the group that seized the Romanian embassy in Bern, Switzerland, in 1955), members of the anti-communist resistance movement and protesters during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
[14] Large-scale embezzlement causing serious damage to the national economy was added to the list of crimes eligible for execution by decree 202/1953 while in 1957, the death penalty for aggravated murder was introduced into the Penal Code for the first time under communism.
Counting first on the specific deterrent effect of the executions, the regime used the death penalty mainly to eliminate fascists, saboteurs, traitors or members of the resistance groups, etc.
Although leading jurists debated and attempted to abolish capital punishment in 1956, legal provisions and actual use tightened in 1958 when the Stalinist ruler Gheorghiu-Dej initiated a new wave of repressions.
The legal provisions, as they were explained to the wider public, were developed in the spirit of claims about the regime's humanitarianism, and thus blamed the violent repression specific to the Stalinist period.
[15][16] During Ceauşescu's entire time in power (1965–89), 104 people were executed by firing squad at Jilava and Rahova prisons, with commutations reinforcing his image as a stern but kind father to the nation.
[18] Romania's last executions were those of Ceaușescu himself and his wife Elena, following the overthrow of the regime in the Romanian Revolution of 1989; they were subjected to a show trial and then shot by a firing squad.
[21] Ahead of the 2000 presidential election, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, who finished in second place, made reintroduction of capital punishment a major plank of his campaign.
