Could Russia bring back the death penalty?

Russian officials and parliamentarians have proposed reintroducing the death penalty as a punishment for terrorists. Such calls, in particular, were voiced by Senator Andrei Klishas, ​​deputies Viktor Vodolatsky and Leonid Slutsky, and Advisor to the Prosecutor General Natalya Poklonskaya. The authorities have already promised to work on this issue at the legislative level. Russia introduced a moratorium on capital punishment in 1997, after it joined the Council of Europe and signed the Human Rights Convention. The concept of the death penalty remains in the Criminal Code, but in fact it is not applied. Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin previously stated that its return is possible only if a new Constitution is adopted.

State Duma deputy Viktor Vodolatsky connects the need to introduce this type of punishment with the ongoing military operation in Ukraine. In his opinion, the death penalty will reduce the threat of terrorist attacks from opponents: “We must carefully respond to everything that people who set tasks for terrorists say. These include Victoria Nuland, and they include Kirill Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine. The American said that unpleasant surprises await Russia in the near future, we are convinced of this.

Our troops on the territory of the Northern Military District are moving forward, the only way to destabilize the situation is to carry out terrorist attacks inside Russia. Therefore, we must lift the moratorium on the death penalty for the duration of the SVO, for the duration of the completion of denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.

In my opinion, this will reduce the number of people who will carry out bloody acts on the territory of our country for money.

The population has been bombarding us with appeals for a long time, especially regarding those individuals who are serial killers, maniacs, serial pedophiles. People say that for such a category the moratorium on the death penalty should be lifted. Our population, on the contrary, unites when there is an external threat, so all actions are aimed at protecting Russians.”

According to a 2019 survey by the Public Opinion Foundation, 69% of citizens called the death penalty an acceptable punishment for some categories of crimes. In a 2022 Superjob study, the share of those agreeing with this position dropped to 43%. At the same time, most supporters of the death penalty believe that it should be applied primarily to persons who commit rape of minors. Next come serial killers and terrorists.

What documents currently record the moratorium on the death penalty? This was explained on Kommersant FM by Vladislav Kocherin, managing partner of the law firm Kocherin and Partners: “Our main document is the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which in the first paragraph of Article 20 enshrines everyone’s right to life, regardless of their citizenship, regardless of their what he did. The second paragraph of the same article, taking into account the fact that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution we already had the death penalty, which was actively used, establishes the provision that capital punishment is applied until its subsequent abolition in accordance with federal law.

In practice, due to the fact that Russia at that moment was joining the Council of Europe and acceding to the necessary international conventions in order to participate in these international organizations, a moratorium on the death penalty was actually declared.

To date, the situation has developed that we have not ratified the protocol of the Human Rights Convention, which enshrines the abolition of the death penalty, that is, we have only declared that we are acceding to it. The very rule of abolition of capital punishment is regulated precisely by this Convention and Protocol No. 6 to it, to which we once acceded, but in October 2022 Russia withdrew from it. That is, in fact, at present there are no international treaties obliging the Russian Federation to anything.

We are limited only by our internal regulations at the moment, the Constitution of Russia, which guarantees everyone the right to life and stipulates that the death penalty is a temporary measure and is subject to abolition in the future.

So, I think, if we proceed from the current legislation – the Constitution and the ruling of the Constitutional Court – then, in essence, it is necessary either to interpret the basic law differently, or to change it completely, since it is impossible to change this one provision separately.

That is, you can only initiate a popular vote, adopt a new Constitution, which provides for some other rules. I can only express my personal opinion: after all, the death penalty cannot be returned, it is a very dangerous instrument. It is clear that we are all in approximately the same information field, and surrounding events in one way or another influence us and the decisions we make. Another question: what will the result be?”

All officials who proposed introducing the death penalty linked this initiative with the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall. However, even if the legislation is changed, it will not be possible to apply execution to those responsible for this tragedy, recalled Ekaterina Gruzinskaya, adviser to the criminal practice of the BVMP law office:

“Based on the ruling of the Constitutional Court in 2009, the death penalty has been suspended. According to the rules that are currently in force in relation to criminal law, it can be assigned only through the development and adoption of a special federal law. In the Criminal Code there is a retroactive force of the criminal law, which means that the newly adopted law does not apply to those acts that were committed before its entry into force.

Therefore, even if the death penalty is suddenly imposed now, it cannot be applied to those persons who are guilty of the tragedy in Crocus City Hall. But we can safely assume that a huge discussion will unfold regarding the adoption of this law, and now the entire society, including the scientific community, is divided into two camps.

I am an opponent of the death penalty and believe that cruelty will only breed cruelty. Of course, now this discussion is an emotional reaction, but from a legal point of view, a return to capital punishment is impossible. In those countries where it does not exist, where there is a fairly humane attitude towards persons serving life imprisonment, and the crime rate is quite low.”

Currently, 135 countries around the world do not use the death penalty. In another 64 states, this punishment is provided for by law for different types of crimes. Among the latter are, for example, the USA, China, Belarus, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. However, world practice does not speak in favor of the use of the death penalty, noted lawyer of the Yakovlev and Partners legal group Evgenia Ryzhkova:

“In most cases, this measure is applied for violent crimes, but, for example, during the period of the Soviet Union, the death penalty could be imposed for economic offenses. There are not many countries in the world now where such a measure is applied. The peculiarity is that the tightening of punishment, including the introduction of the death penalty during the USSR period and according to the experience of other countries, does not in any way affect the reduction of crime. There was a moratorium on it in Russia due to the fact that we signed the Human Rights Convention. It ended, and the Constitutional Court decided that due to the fact that there is no practice of its application, the Russian Federation will not return to this for now. Accordingly, at any moment the Constitutional Court may reconsider its decision and say that we can begin to apply the death penalty.”

It is believed that the last time the death penalty was used in Russia was in 1996 against Sergei Golovkin, accused of almost 40 rapes and murders of boys in the Moscow region. He was shot in Moscow in the Butyrka prison. The current preventive measures can be considered even more stringent, says Anton Gusev, partner at the law firm Timofeev, Gusev and Partners:

“The purpose of criminal punishment, including the death penalty, is not revenge, but the prevention of future crimes. And one has to wonder: is this terrorist, who admitted that he was worth 500 thousand rubles. did this, planned to stay in a special regime colony for life somewhere in a very cold region of the Russian Federation? He most likely thought that punishment would not overtake him.

I believe that the formulation of the question is not entirely correct, and I would think about what is better for a criminal: the death penalty or serving a very long sentence under a special regime? The most important thing is that the death penalty is an irreversible punishment, and one must have absolute confidence in the judicial system that it will not make mistakes.”

The return of executions is not excluded, but most likely this will not happen very soon, says Olga Sadovskaya, head of the international legal protection department of the Team Against Torture (the Ministry of Justice considers her a foreign agent): “The number and prevalence of crimes and the level of crime are influenced only by the inevitability of punishment . When there are questions about the investigative and judicial system, about how it identifies criminals, prevents crimes, about how it investigates them, the cruelty of punishment will not help in any way. And if terrorists are shot, there will be fewer of them.

If we are talking about those who commit terrorist acts in fulfillment of some of their religious goals, beliefs, fanaticism, then this does not affect them at all, because they, in principle, are initially ready to die. Those criminals who commit this for some other reason, this is also a special level of psychological readiness.

By the example of the United States, by the way, it is clearly visible that the number of jokes there is increasing, while the death penalty exists in more than half of the states. This has no effect on the crime rate.

If we talk about Russia, I think that a legislative initiative may appear again. But it is very difficult to say what the attitude of the supreme power is to this issue. According to my observations, it is very different. Probably, maybe there is a chance of returning the death penalty, but it seems to me that not right now.”

At a meeting of the Human Rights Council in 2022, President Vladimir Putin said that he still remains opposed to the death penalty. But in March 2024, speaking at the FSB board, he noted that one should not “forget about traitors, identify them by name and punish them without a statute of limitations.”

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Ulyana Gorelova