Execution Article: Why Russia Is Not Lifting the Moratorium on the Death Penalty

It should be noted that Sergey Mironov had already proposed in his Telegram channel to reinstate the death penalty for terrorists, child murderers, and maniacs. At that time, he called the moratorium "liberal games in humanism". The immediate reason for Mironov’s sharp statement was the case of the "Angarsk maniac" Mikhail Popkov. Let us recall that he is serving a life sentence for the murder of 22 women. Moreover, after the verdict was issued, Popkov declared that he had killed another 59 people. At the same time, doctors confirmed his full sanity.

The first deputy chairman of the Public Chamber’s Commission on Demography, Pavel Pozhigaylo, also spoke out against the moratorium on the death penalty. He believes that rapist migrants deserve the highest measure of punishment. According to the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, the number of sexual crimes committed by migrants increased by 20% in 2024. Moreover, such crimes against minors rose by 38%.

It must be said that before the moratorium was introduced, the death penalty was applied only in exceptional cases — precisely as Mironov and Pozhigaylo are demanding today. For example, women, minors, and elderly offenders could not be sentenced to death. Essentially, Article 44 (clause “n”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which has not been formally repealed, applied only to maniacs. For instance, the last person executed in the Russian Federation was Sergey Golovkin, who was accused of nearly 40 rapes and murders of boys. He was shot in 1996 on the grounds of Moscow's Butyrka prison.

Today, the main opponent of lifting the moratorium is the Ministry of Justice. Officials refer to the fact that in 1997 the Constitutional Court ruled that the death penalty should neither be imposed nor carried out. And the decisions of the Constitutional Court are final and not subject to appeal.

This position is more than debatable. Indeed, the moratorium on the use of the death penalty in peacetime was introduced on April 16, 1997, in accordance with Protocol No. 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which the Russian Federation signed upon joining the Council of Europe. However, on February 25, 2022, the Council of Europe suspended Russia’s membership in the organization. And on March 15, Russia announced the beginning of the process of withdrawal from the organization. The provision on the death penalty remains in national legislation. Therefore, the ban (moratorium) can be lifted. At one time, the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, suggested that the moratorium could be lifted by a simple decree of the President of the Russian Federation, without amending the Constitution.

The Director of the Department for Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Grigory Lukyantsev, holds a similar opinion. He believes that lifting the moratorium is entirely possible. He noted that the ban on carrying out the death penalty was one of the obligations for Russia’s accession to the Council of Europe. Now, after the country’s withdrawal from this international body, the resolution of this issue depends on the position of the authorities and public consensus.

In our country, the death penalty for criminals has been abolished more than once — and reinstated just as often. For example, the death penalty, which had been in force in the Russian Empire, was abolished on October 28, 1917, by the decree of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. However, this punishment soon had to be restored — the Civil War was underway. Officially, executions were legalized again on February 21, 1918, with the publication of the decree "The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!"

The second time the death penalty was abolished was by Joseph Stalin in 1947, immediately after the Great Patriotic War. However, the decree of the Soviet parliament included certain reservations: execution was not imposed solely in peacetime and applied only to persons found guilty of war crimes. By 1950, the "execution article" was reinstated. According to historians, this decision was prompted by the beginning of the Cold War and a well-founded fear of saboteurs and spies. Nevertheless, even in the harshest years, the death penalty was considered an exceptional measure of punishment.

Of course, in Soviet times, people sentenced to death were not only rapists, spies, murderers, and saboteurs. Under Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961, currency speculators Yan Rokotov and Vladislav Faibishenko were sentenced to death. In 1962, a decree was adopted introducing the death penalty for accepting bribes "in especially large amounts". Thus, in 1984, the Krasnodar court sentenced to death for bribery the elderly head of the restaurant and cafeteria trust in the city of Gelendzhik, Berta Borodkina.

Today, about half of Russians support lifting the moratorium on the death penalty. Moreover, the majority of our citizens believe that the problem requires an immediate solution. Only 26% of Russians consider it necessary to maintain the current status. As a rule, supporters of the moratorium on the death penalty argue their position on moral grounds. Above all, this is the principle of the inviolability of human life itself. They believe that the cruelty of depriving a person of life cannot be justified, even in the case of the most monstrous crimes.

More rational opponents of reinstating the death penalty in judicial practice prefer to talk about the possibility of judicial errors, which cannot be corrected. At the same time, arguments about the high cost of keeping criminals for life in special prisons are considered cynical. Indeed, the risk of a judicial error appears to be the most weighty argument of those who oppose the death penalty. The possibility of unjust sentences cannot be fully eliminated, as the 19th-century French mathematician Bausso-Me proved in his book On the Probability of Errors in Judicial Verdicts. However, their number can be significantly reduced.

Above all, the possibility of judicial errors can be reduced if oversight of investigative procedures is strengthened. Current legislation provides for a strict system of proof of the defendant's guilt and significant opportunities for defense attorneys. The court with a jury plays a huge role in protecting the rights of defendants. A court decision can be appealed to higher judicial authorities. A criminal case can also be returned for further investigation if the evidence of guilt does not withstand scrutiny. In addition, the defense has the right to involve independent experts in the case review.

Of course, no one would deny the fact that human life is priceless. And as the experience of Western countries shows, refusing to apply the death penalty has little effect on the overall crime rate. However, as sociologists argue, in the case of the moratorium, it is necessary to consider the mentality of the Russian criminal world. While a fanatic fundamentalist is unlikely to be stopped by the fear of execution, serial rapists and terrorists, as a rule, consider their own person to be extremely valuable.