1.Introduction: Definition and Historical Transformation of Meanings

In criminal law, capital punishment is understood as the deprivation of a person’s life as a sanction for committing a particularly serious crime, carried out on behalf of the state by a legally binding court sentence. At first glance, the definition is neutral, yet it conceals the main anthropological paradox of our time: is it legitimate for a structure composed of human beings to delegate to itself the right to what, in other contexts, is called murder? If in the 18th and 19th centuries, capital punishment was perceived as a technical instrument of deterrence (C. Beccaria only allowed it in cases of threat to the existence of the state), by the mid-20th century, the focus had shifted. World War II and the exposure of totalitarian regimes demonstrated how easily the state can turn the punitive sword into an instrument of terror. Contemporary morality, unlike archaic morality, can no longer rely on lex talionis («an eye for an eye»), since the principle of humanism demands not the reproduction of evil, but its minimization [1].

2.Material and methods

The contemporary debate on capital punishment is split into two camps that operate on fundamentally different types of rationality. The «FOR» Position: Retributivism and Social Selection Proponents of retaining the death penalty typically advance three clusters of arguments.

The first is retributive (restoration of justice). A murderer who commits an especially cynical crime (e.g., serial killers or terrorists) supposedly «forfeits their right to life.» The moral logic here is simple: a society that does not apply the death penalty to such subjects supposedly devalues the lives of their victims. The second is forfeiture of the social contract. The argument is that by committing a particularly serious act, the individual automatically excludes themselves from the legal community to which they delegated the right to punish. Accordingly, the state acts merely as an agent of a terminated contract. The third is specific deterrence. The executed individual will certainly not reoffend [2].

Unlike life imprisonment, which leaves the theoretical possibility of escape or committing murder inside prison, death provides an absolute guarantee of security [3]. However, this is precisely where a breach arises: absolute security is achieved at the cost of absolute irreversibility [4]. The «AGAINST» Position: Humanism and Procedural Skepticism namely the opposition builds its argument on two pillars: judicial error and the dehumanization of the punitive system [5].

1.Irreversibility of error. Human justice has never possessed, and does not possess, absolute truth. The practice of all states where execution was applied (from Great Britain to the USA) knows of cases of posthumous rehabilitation. Modern genetic testing has uncovered dozens of cases where innocent people were executed. While life imprisonment can be overturned upon the discovery of new circumstances, a death sentence cannot [6].

2. Discrediting the principle of humanism. Article 7 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (and analogous norms in continental law) proclaims that punishment cannot aim to cause physical suffering. Moreover, the psychological state of a condemned person on death row (death row phenomenon) is qualified by the European Court of Human Rights as torture. Even in its «humane» forms (injection, guillotine), capital punishment represents absolute suffering, interrupted by death.
3. Ineffectiveness as deterrence. Empirical studies (e.g., comparative analysis of US states with and without execution) have not revealed a convincing correlation between the existence of capital punishment and a reduction in the rate of intentional homicide. Crimes of on do not consider the punishment; serial offenders consider themselves elusive. The death penalty functions not as a deterrent, but as an instrument of revenge legitimized by the state. Practical Aspect: Global Landscape and the Russian Impasse Today, over 2/3 of the world’s states have either completely abolished capital punishment or have not applied it in practice for more than 10 years (de facto abolitionists) [7].

The European Union has made the abolition of the death penalty a mandatory condition for membership.

The USA remains an island of retention within Western civilization, but there is a steady trend towards reducing executions and introducing moratoriums at the gubernatorial level. A special case is the Russian Federation. Since 1996, a moratorium on the imposition of death sentences has been in effect in Russia (due to joining the Council of Europe).

However, formally, the death penalty is retained in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for five types of crimes (murder with aggravating circumstances, encroachment on the life of a state official, etc.). In 2009, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation “extended” the moratorium until the ratification of the prohibiting protocol, and in 2015 (after leaving the Council of Europe) effectively confirmed that the death penalty cannot be applied because juries have not been established in all regions. From a legal point of view, this is an «eternal moratorium»: neither abolition nor application. Ethically, the situation of suspension creates the illusion that the state is morally ready for execution but procedurally cannot implement it. The legal impasse is compounded by the fact that the Constitutional Court indicated that the resumption of executions is possible only through a change in the Court’s own legal positions. However, in itself, the preservation of this article in the Criminal Code, from the point of view of abolitionists, is a dangerous symbol, since the state reserves the right to kill, which destroys the legal system [8].

3.Results and discussions

During the research:

1) the phenomenon of the death penalty as an exceptional measure of criminal punishment has been considered through the prism of modern ethical and legal norms;

2) the evolution of society’s views on the permissibility of depriving a person of life by order of the state has been analyzed;

3) the main doctrinal approaches have been studied.

Conclusions

Capital punishment represents an irresolvable ethical-legal conflict between two values: absolute social security (through the elimination of the criminal) and the absolute value of human life, including the life of the criminal. In contemporary morality, the second position prevails, but not due to logical demonstrability, but due to an evolution of sensitivity: society can no longer tolerate the execution of an innocent person for the sake of questionable deterrence of the guilty. If in the 18th century, C. Beccaria lost the debate publicly, in the 21st century, abolitionism has become the dominant doctrine in countries with developed civil society. Retention of the death penalty marks an authoritarian or transitional phase of a political regime. The only legitimate basis for capital punishment that can still be discussed in a philosophical key is war crimes and genocide in conditions of open warfare, where ordinary justice does not function [9].