On November 8, 1965, 50 years ago, the United Kingdom abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. On that date, Parliament trans­mit­ted to Queen Elizabeth II for roy­al assent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act of 1965. The Act, which end­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in England, Wales, and Scotland sub­ject to Parliamentary review after 5 years, took effect on November 9, 1965. When Parliament con­firmed the Act in December 1969, the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United Kingdom became per­ma­nent. The move­ment to end the death penal­ty in the U.K. was spurred by three con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tions in the 1950s. In 1950, Timothy Evans was wrong­ful­ly exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of his wife and young child. His neigh­bor, John Christie, who tes­ti­fied against Evans, was lat­er found guilty of six oth­er mur­ders and con­fessed to killing Evans’ fam­i­ly. Evans was giv­en a posthu­mous roy­al par­don in 1966. In 1953, Derek Bentley was exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of a police offi­cer dur­ing a rob­bery, although the actu­al killer was a teenag­er who was inel­i­gi­ble for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and Bentley was at most an accom­plice to the rob­bery. Bentley’s con­vic­tion was posthu­mous­ly over­turned in 1998. Finally, in 1955, Ruth Ellis was exe­cut­ed for killing her abu­sive lover. Her exe­cu­tion drew wide­spread pub­lic out­rage and more than 50,000 peo­ple signed peti­tions unsuc­cess­ful­ly seek­ing a reprieve for Ellis. 

The death penal­ty for mur­der was abol­ished in Northern Ireland on 25 July 1973 under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973. The U.K.‘s future com­mit­ment to abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty is fur­ther secured by its rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 1983, Protocol 6 to the European Convention banned the death penal­ty for all domes­tic offens­es and, in 2002, Protocol 13 abol­ished the death penal­ty in all circumstances.

(L. Blom-Cooper, ​“Fifty years on, the debate over what replaces the death penal­ty con­tin­ues,” The Guardian, November 4, 2015; ​“The Longer View: Capital pun­ish­ment,” BBC, November 8, 2015.) See History of the Death Penalty and International.

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