History and presentation
Capital punishment, the death penalty is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences.
Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by the severing of the head.
Today, there are many methods of execution as: * Hanging * Lethal injection * Guillotine * Beheading * Firing squad * Electrocution (electric chair) * Stoning (lapidation) * Gas chamber

Capital punishment has in the past been practiced in virtually / practically every society, although / but currently only 58 nations actively practice it, with 95 countries abolishing it (the remainder having not used it for 10 years or allowing it only in exceptional circumstances such as wartime).
It is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region.
In the European Union member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.

Today, most countries are considered by Amnesty International as abolitionist, which allowed a vote on a nonbinding resolution to the United Nation to promote the abolition of the death penalty.
However, over 60% (sixty per cent) of the world's population live in countries where executions, take place insofar as the four most populous countries in the world (the People's Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia), apply the death penalty and all of them voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the United Nation General Assembly in 2008.

Trends in most of the world have long been to move to less painful, or more humane executions.
France developed the guillotine for this reason in the final years of the 18th century while Britain banned drawing and quartering in the early 19th