Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864–66

The Government agreed to a Royal Commission on 3 May 1864. In the House of Commons, William Ewart proposed a select committee, but withdrew in favour of Charles Neate's resolution requesting a Royal Commission.[1]

The commission was formally appointed by Queen Victoria on 8 July 1864. Its terms of reference were:

to inquire into the Provisions and Operation of the Laws now in force in the United Kingdom, under and by virtue of which the Punishment of Death may be inflicted upon persons convicted of certain crimes, and also into the manner in which Capital Sentences are carried into execution, and to report whether any, and if any what alteration is desirable in such Laws, or any of them, or in the manner in which such sentences are carried into execution.

The commissioners were:

Secretary to the commission was James Henry Patteson

The Commission took oral evidence on 15 days, between 29 November 1864 and 25 March 1865, dealing with three or four witnesses a day.

Written questions were sent by the Commission via the Foreign Office to foreign law officers and experts:

1. What crimes, if any, are now punishable with death by the law of . . . . . ?
2. When a person is found guilty of a capital offence, is there any power in the jury, or the court, to reduce the punishment below that of death by finding attenuating circumstances ? If so, is this power frequently exercised?
3. What is the most severe punishment next to that of death by the law of . . . . ? and in cases where the sentence of death is reduced by the finding of attenuating circumstances, or commuted by the government to such lesser punishment, is the latter invariably carried out in full ? If not, to what extent is it mitigated ?
4. Have there been any changes of late years in the law of . . . . . by which certain crimes formerly capital have ceased to be so ? If so, have these crimes increased, and is their increase, if any, attributed to the diminution of the punishment ?
5. In what manner is the sentence of death executed, and does the execution take place in public or private ?
6. In what proportion of capital convictions is the punishment of death usually reduced by the clemency of the Head of the State to some minor infliction?

Sent France, Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, Saxony, Hanover, Italy, Tuscany, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Nassau, Anhalt, Oldenberg, Brunswick, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, Maine and Rhode Island, Columbia, Indiana, Venezuela, Wisconsin, Ecuador, the Australian colonies, Scotland, Ireland

The Report of the commission was published in December 1865.[2] The report proper summarised the evidence and gave the commissioners' recommendations. The oral testimony was printed verbatim over 471 pages; the written responses were gathered into an appendix of 195 pages plus an index. There followed statistical tables and a Draft Bill on infanticide by James Shaw Willes.

In their report, they included a section summarising the response to the following questions:

• the nature of capital punishment; its difference from all other punishments in its irrevocability, etc.
• deterrent effect of the punishment of death
• the Home Office
• restoring to the judges the power of recording sentence of death
• whether juries show a reluctance to convict in capital cases
• the propriety of giving power to jurors to bring in verdicts of "guilty of murder" with "extenuating circumstances" in certain cases
• infanticide
• allowing appeals in capital cases
• whether executions should be public or private
• what secondary punishment should be inflicted in the event of the abolition of the punishment of death

• Capital punishment in the United Kingdom