Capital punishment in Camia

Capital punishment in Camia is imposed for a variety of personal and political crimes. It is permitted for crimes, amongst others, such as treason, sedition, espionage, murder, rape, felony murder, some forms of burglary, piracy, and for servicepersons specifically, some forms of cowardice, desertion, and insubordination. However, capital punishment has not been a mandatory sentence for anything since 1998.

Execution procedures

Decapitation

Camia used decapitation by sword as its only execution method until 1871, for both military and civilian executions. The executioner was usually a petty officer from the local garrison who was designated for this duty; he would be selected for a powerful build and skillfulness with swords, as ideally the prisoner should be cleanly beheaded with one stroke of the sword. This required strength, speed, and precision, since the prisoner's neck was not braced against anything. The execution sword had only one edge, and the other edge was weighed to make cutting through the neck easier.

It has been noted that this specific execution method is unprecedented in metropolitan Themiclesia, which mainly used strangulation; a Camian origin is therefore required. Mait argues that the method was actually meant as a stunt, and it is appropriate to the context of the military demonstrating its competence to the public in peacetime by having one of its soldiers perform a highly challenging manoeuvre. Even though this is clearly not how swords would have been used in battle, Mait cites the real-life, modern parallel of bartenders juggling their shakers in fancy, performative ways that are not necessary just to make a cocktail. It is not clear how often were Camian executioners successful in beheading prisoners in one stroke, but evidently they took this duty quite seriously and practiced the required manoeuvre on dummies or animal carcasses.

Shooting

Shooting became the execution method for military offenders under the Capital Punishment Regulation Act of 1871 and for civilian offenders for three times, 1887 to 1934, 1959 to 1971, and again from 1985 to 1998.

As the law vague, stating only that prisoners were to "die by gunshot", the armed forces developed a number of protocols surrounding the practice. As early as the initial implementation of the act, it was apparent that capital punishment was carried out differently for traitors, cowards, and deserters. As a result, while other prisoners were permitted to face the executioner free of bonds and standing, the category of especially despised prisoners were shot kneeling and with arms and legs bound. It seems executioners had discretion how far away to stand and where to aim on the prisoner's body, and some aimed for the prisoner's head; this seems to continue the tradition of decapitation as a stunt as well, to show off the executioner's good aim while representing his unit in its uniform.

In 1887, owing to the coup, the armed forces condemned some civilian leaders as traitors and therefore shot them in the latter way, which was also necessary because said prisoners would not co-operate with the executioners. This was reportedly when the Lieutenant-General Chuk told the executioners that, had they been in Themiclesia, they would have been guilty of the crime of murder because they slightly altered the way traitors were put to death as they deserved. Subsequent to the executions after the coup, it seems all civilians were executed this way regardless if they were traitors, under the assumption they would not voluntarily face their executioners.

For prisoners permitted the more dignified way to die, the executioners wore their dress uniforms. But if the prisoner resisted and had to be tied down and then dragged to the execution site, they often took off their expensive uniforms to avoid damaging them, giving Camian executioners their undressed appearance in photographs. This would not have been voluntary in contemporary culture, as Camian soldiers at the time were in general proud of their uniforms and would wear them whenever possible.

According to executioners' accounts some prisoners had to be tied down and then held immovable by a pair of assistants, so that the executioner could have a clean shot from behind. To avoid accidentally shooting the assistants, the executioner would have to shoot at point-blank range.

Hanging

Hanging was used for civilians from 1871 until 1887 and again from 1934 to 1957.

During the first period between 1871 and 1887, the form of hanging was either suspension or short-drop depending on the gallows being used. If it was the former, the executioner had to hoist the prisoner up physically with the rope and then tie it to a fixture. Several prisons installed winches or pulleys to assist the executioner in pulling the prisoner up, which would be impossible if they were heavier than the executioner.

In 1934, the Camian legislature issued the Directive No. 3372, forbidding the use of shooting as execution method for civilians, in no small part because the armed forces were in the habit of using the same execution procedure for military traitors and all civilian prisoners. As this information became more widely known, it was perceived as an indignity and associated with the excess of military rule between 1887 and 1919. Hanging was resumed as it remained lawful under the 1871 act. However, an exception was made for minors, for whom shooting remained the standard method; while not explained in the law, this was apparently because children who were not heavy enough apparently took a very long time to asphyxiate.

However, it emerged 1952 that a particularly sympathetic executioner was tieing weights to prisoners' feet to help them die more quickly and hopefully break their necks in the initial drop. This sparked an outrage and caused the Secretary of Justice to issue directions to prison that prisoners were allowed nothing on their persons to make them heavier than their natural weight. Interpreted strictly, at least a number of prisons therefore stripped prisoners of garments and exchanged steel restraints for fishing wire, which had almost no weight. Additionally, the length of the rope was also put under strict regulation such that the prisoner would not experience any dropping once the trapdoor opened.

Garrote

The Camian law briefly used garroting for civilian executions between 1957 and 1960, including minors. The prisoner was shackled to the garrote in a kneeling position, while the executioner turned a wheel from behind, tightening a steel cable around the prisoner's neck. According to regulations by the Department of Justice, the garrote wheel was turned once every half-minute while the prisoner was still conscious. Once the prisoner lost consciousness, the garrote was applied to its maximal setting and left in place for 60 minutes. A digit was amputated immediately after execution and sent to the prisoner's inheritor as proof of death. The body was then cremated at the site of the execution, ashes being disposed into a deep hole.

A popular legend has it that after the prisoner had died on the garrote, the executioner would still fire a pistol into the cranium of the prisoner if the prisoner was a traitor or convicted of espionage purely to cause a disfiguring wound on the prisoner's face. Even though prisoners were photographed for public records after execution, it cannot be excluded that an executioner could have done so for symbolic reasons afterwards, since the body was cremated at the execution site.

Between 1950 and 1957, the Camian Department of Justice also trialled an experimental garrote that, instead of tightening a rope around the prisoner's neck, pushed a blade into it to sever the spinal cord and windpipe from behind. This object has been dismantled and can only be seen in the execution record archive in films and photographs. From these, it is known that the blade was shaped like a pitchfork with two prongs on its side, which catch and centre the prisoner's neck to ensure the spine was caught and eventually severed, despite the prisoner's movement to avoid the blade. Because the blade cuts through bone, the executioner was selected for strength: the experimental garrote's sole known operator, Sergeant Matt Kayton, was 6'-10" at the age of 19 when he became an executioner and "satisfied tests as to his superior physical power".

Executions of minors

From the earliest time of Camian history, children appear to have had less protection in the law compared to the case in Themiclesia. While it is true in fact that children as young as 11 could be sentenced to death, these were regularly commuted to enslavement after the judgments were interrupted and certified to the Chancery. There are only four cases where death sentences have not been commuted for criminals under the age of 18 since 1520. For whatever reason, such commutations were not a matter of course in Camia, but of grace. As many small Camian towns had no magistracy, early residents resorted to the nearest army garrison for justice, and it seems the military law did not anticipate cases involving children and failed to provide for interruptions and certifications to the Imperial Chancery, resulting in death sentences for minors not properly commuted.

As for why commutations were not demanded by the community, some have pointed out that public sympathy of the time was not always with the minor offender on account of age. Recorded are many instances where protestations and even riots have occurred against commutation of death sentences on certain minors, especially if they are not very young. Commutations to enslavement was, instead, favoured by the crown because it thereby gained additional property, and a young prisoner commuted by the crown was more likely to be grateful to the crown and therefore less likely to rebel. It has been noted that the actual limit beneath which executions were felt to be absolutely wrong on account of age was about 10, and that is what the law actually states; it is instead the crown's concern for revenue, and a grey area for young people in this transitional age to legal adulthood at 20, that drive and acquiesce to commutations as a matter of course.

Cultural issues

1953 Abolition Centennial in Themiclesia

On December 30, 1953, the Prime Minister of Themiclesia hosted the 64th World Conference for the Abolition of Capital Punishment on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the country's very last judicial executions in 1853. During the event, the Prime Minister and the Attorney-general provided statistics showing that Themiclesia's average conviction rate over the last 100 years has at no point in time risen above that during the 1840s, when abolitionists started tabulating such statistics, making the point that the abolition of capital punishment does not encourage crime.

Also during the conference, the Secretary of State for the Envoy Office (the foreign minister) made derogatory statements about Camia's ongoing purge of "traitors, collaborators, and saboteurs" during the Pan-Septentrion War, who were liable to the death penalty for their actions if not yet convicted. The military, which enforced this purge, extended itself into secondary and tertiary schools, where the military training squads were authorized to take against flagrant offenders all actions up to and including death; this resulted in thousands of executions of both students and faculty in full view of the school, for offences as trivial as eating Themiclesian-made confections which "disseminate degenerate and treasonous ideologies".

Camia's Department of External Affairs responded to the criticism from Themiclesia by stating such executions were "the good and just law of our Themiclesian forefathers that have been forgotten across the sea". The Baronet Kups retorted that "the law library has come up empty, better try the Patent Office for that one." DEA then solicited a bitter diatribe from Matt Kayton, who was not only an executioner but also involved in training high school military squads to execute offending students and faculty; in this statement, he denounced Themiclesia's inability to do what is difficult but just to preserve societal values and root out corruption. Kups then said that Themiclesia will offer a free bed for Kayton at the Seriously Mental Sanitarium (SMS) for as long as is necessary, if he ever visit Themiclesia. It should be noted the Seriously Mental Sanitarium is a fictional location as far as Kups intended it.

Historically, it was received wisdom in Camia that it was a liberal and lenient nation compared to its mother country of Themiclesia, even after Themiclesia abolished capital punishment in 1853 while Camia was still employing it in hundreds of cases each year. This construction viewed Themiclesia as having far too many laws with arbitrary consequences, such that "in shaking a hand, a different law is broken by each of five digits"; in other words, this view holds that Themiclesian jurisprudence was despotic, while that of Camia was rational.

Such thinking found resonance on both sides of the Qmeq Sea at the time, with some Themiclesians (such as Trep J., in office 1840s) stating that absolute government is ideal and correct, even though "in this enlightened age, this absolute government is exercised by not the wisdom of one person, but by one wisdom created, refined, and agreed to by multiple persons individually or through true representation". That is, absolute government is itself not a problem at all, but only what is to be done; thus, decisions are to be made democratically, and once they are made they are applied despotically.

In the 1600s, when a Camian was still in preambulatory stages, it was already argued that Camian people were raised in a different environment, legal and social, compared to the metropole. In the Grand Remonstration of 1653, when a group of Camian gentlemen travelled to Themiclesia to express their views on colonial government, they stated that the people of the metropole were trained from a young age to deal with countless royal laws, while Camians were much more in the habit of making their personal laws; thus, Camians should be excused from royal duties to prevent conflicts with Themiclesian laws.

While Camian laws permit capital punishment for many crimes, Camia has sentenced 0 – 5 criminals to death per year since 1998, a drop of about 96% compared to 1948. This has been attributed, more than anything else, to a trend in legislation to allow judges discretion over punishments imposed and in the judicial system only to impose capital punishment exceptionally, not automatically even for the most egregious offence.

Judicial reform began in earnest in the mid-70s with Chief Justices Brown, White, and Gray publicly telling other judges that they would entertain, as a rule, any appeal if capital punishment is imposed and seriously reconsider the sentence in each case. While Brown, as the country's most senior judge, was chided for his somewhat interfering practice, other judges began to take a more lenient bench in the superior courts into account when passing sentence, causing a moderate but consistent drop in the number of capital sentences passed each year. It is also seen in the education system, where serving and retired judges have strong influences on students, who in turn become members of the legal profession.

See also

• Camia