Death Penalty in GB and the USA

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Discussion and Essays, grade: 2-, , language: English, abstract: Great Britain is an important country in the world. Everyone knows it and has already heard about it. But it has a very extensive history, which is not acquainted to everybody. In this work I can not explain the entire historical development of Great Britain, I have to restrict it to the history of death penalty, but there will be some connections to historical events.
Today, the death penalty is no longer practiced in Great Britain. But in former times it was usual that the death was set to a normal punishment for different kinds of crime. Until the 1950s it was a tradition to kill the law-breakers. The peak of the death penalty in Great Britain was the 18th century. At this time, there were over 200 offenses which were punishable by death. Often the judge decided if the offender is guilty or not. Since 1861 the offenses were limited to slayer, high treason, piracy and arson. Additional since 1868 the executions were no longer for public. A commission, which was selected by the government, wrote a report about the pro and contra of the death penalty. Because of this report, death penalty was now only punished for a heavier murder, for example when a police officer was killed in service.