On February 3, Australia marked 50 years since its last exe­cu­tion. That exe­cu­tion — the hang­ing of Ronald Joseph Ryan on February 3, 1967 for the mur­der of a prison guard dur­ing an escape attempt — came at a time in which sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the coun­try was already wan­ing. The state of Victoria, where Ryan was exe­cut­ed, had not had an exe­cu­tion since 1951. Though cer­tain crimes car­ried a manda­to­ry death sen­tence, the state gov­ern­ment cab­i­net had com­mut­ed 34 of the oth­er 35 death sen­tences imposed in the inter­ven­ing 16 years. The Australian High Court had over­turned the one oth­er death sen­tence. A man who served on Ryan’s jury said none of the jurors believed he would actu­al­ly be exe­cut­ed, and sev­en of them wrote to the cab­i­net in favor of clemen­cy. The Melbourne Herald, a con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing news­pa­per, edi­to­ri­al­ized against the exe­cu­tion in January 1967, say­ing, ​“The state gov­ern­men­t’s insis­tence on this final solu­tion is caus­ing the deep­est revul­sion. It is pun­ish­ment in its most bar­barous form. And expe­ri­ence has shown it gains noth­ing but dis­hon­our for the com­mu­ni­ty which inflicts it.” Eight years lat­er, Victoria abol­ished the death penal­ty, and every Australian state repealed it by 1985. Since that time, Australians have grown more opposed to the death penal­ty. According to the BBC, the most recent nation­al poll, con­duct­ed in August 2009, found 23% of Australians sup­port the death penal­ty and 64% oppose it. In 2010, the nation­al gov­ern­ment, in keep­ing with an inter­na­tion­al treaty, passed laws ban­ning the rein­tro­duc­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Australian gioven­ment has been active in call­ing for the glob­al abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In an inter­view with the Australian Broadcasting Company at the time of the 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Oslo, Norway in June 2016, Australia’s Special Envoy for Human Rights, Philip Ruddock, described his efforts to per­suade U.S. and Chinese offi­cials to move away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“I believe when your friends sug­gest that maybe there’s time for a change, you do start to think a bit more seri­ous­ly about it,” he said. ​“I think many Americans are embar­rassed that they con­tin­ue to have some states that main­tain capital punishment.” 

(“Last man hanged: 50 years in Australia with­out an exe­cu­tion,” BBC, February 2, 2017.) See International.

Citation Guide