The Judgment of Death Act 1823 (4 Geo.

4. c. 48) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (although it did not apply to Scotland).

Passed at a time when there were over 200 offences in English law which carried a mandatory sentence of death, it gave judges the discretion to pass a lesser sentence for the first time.

The Act required judges to enter a sentence of death on the court record, but then allowed them to commute the sentence to imprisonment.

The Act was repealed in England and Wales by the Courts Act 1971,[2] in the Republic of Ireland by the Statute Law Revision Act 1983[3] and repealed in 1980 in Northern Ireland.