Capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

for murder was abolished in

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

in 1971. It continued to be part of the country's military code until it was fully abolished on 21 March 2000. Malta is a signatory of the

Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, is a subsidiary agreement to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It was created on 15 D ...

that commits it to abolition of the death penalty within its borders. Malta has also ratified protocol 13 to the

European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by ...

, that bans the death penalty in all circumstances. Eighteen executions were carried out between 1876 and 1943. The last executions, on 5 July 1943, were of the brothers Karmnu and Guzeppi Zammit who were hanged for the murder of Spiru Grech. The last execution for a crime other than murder took place during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, when

Carmelo Borg Pisani Carmelo Borg Pisani (10 August 1915 – 28 November 1942) was a Maltese artist and Italian Fascist spy, condemned to death for treason in 1942. Early life Born into a Maltese Nationalist family in Senglea on 10 August 1915, Borg Pisani enr ...

was hanged for treason on 28 November 1942. Pisani was a Maltese-born man who had joined the Italian

National Fascist Party The National Fascist Party ( it, Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF) was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian Fascism and as a reorganization of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. Th ...

and taken Italian citizenship in 1940. He returned to Malta on an espionage mission in anticipation of an Axis invasion of the island. The last person condemned to death was Anthony Patignott, on 1 October 1963, for the killing of Manwel Baldacchino. The Governor General of Malta,

Maurice Henry Dorman Sir Maurice Henry Dorman (7 August 1912 – 26 October 1993) was the representative of the Crown in the then-Commonwealth Realms of Tanganyika, Trinidad and Tobago, Sierra Leone, and Malta. Dorman was born in 1912 and was the eldest son of ...

, commuted Patignott's sentence to life imprisonment. Public opinion in Malta is strongly opposed to the death penalty. The 2008 European Values Study (EVS) found that 70.3% of respondents in Malta said that the death penalty can never be justified, while only 4.5% said it can always be justified.

References

Hands Off Cain
– Capital punishment abolitionist web site.

History of Malta Law of Malta Death in Malta Human rights abuses in Malta {{Humanrights-stub