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Capital Punishment is the legal infliction of death as a penalty for violating criminal law. Throughout history people have been put to death for various forms of wrongdoing. Methods of execution have included such practices as crucifixion, stoning, drowning, burning at the stake, impaling, and beheading. Today capital punishment is typically accomplished by lethal gas or injection, electrocution, hanging, or shooting. The death penalty is the most notorious severe practice in the modern world. Other …

…on a gibbet, a simple gallows consisting of one upright post with a crosspiece at the top, continued in Britain well into the 19th century. During the days of the Roman Empire, however, Germanic tribes used hanging as a method of execution, and from them the Anglo-Saxon peoples adopted the measure. Hanging was first adopted in England in 1214, when a nobleman's son was hanged for piracy. In time, hanging displaced more barbarous methods of execution.