Capital Punishment, Posthumous Punishment and Pardon

Abstract

Capital punishment is understood in the context of the First World War. Those executed by their own country were shot at dawn under the authority of the British Army Act 1881. Chapter 4 opens by attempting to understand ‘the shot at dawn’ policy as deterrent and posthumous punishment. It does so from a multiplicity of perspectives: a fictive account of what being shot at dawn might have been like; a more formal perspective of the facts and reasons behind the ‘shot at dawn’ policy; its inconvenient longer-term consequences; and examples of a variety of cases where individuals are tried, sentenced and executed. The corollary of posthumous punishment, both short and long term, is posthumous redemption through pardoning. This chapter pro- ceeds by looking at arguments for and against posthumously pardoning those shot at dawn. While both cases have merit, there is a lack of con- ceptual clarity on how to decide which is the better. With this in mind, there is an attempt to put forward an argument for posthumous pardon- ing. To end, posthumous punishment and pardoning is understood in its historical long-view, in order to show how such concepts are subject to continuity and change over time.