Két kivégzés a Dél-Alföldön a XIX. század utolsó negyedében

Abstract

In our comprehensive research, we examine criminal offences committed in Dualist Hungary for which the perpetrators were sentenced to death and the sentence was ultimately carried out. The new Criminal Code of 1878, the so-called Csemegi Code, significantly restricted the applicability of this most severe sanction: henceforth, it could be imposed only in cases of regicide or attempted regicide, as well as premeditated homicide. As a result, during the period of the so-called “happy years of peace,” the number of executions in Hungary declined markedly compared to earlier times. Either the courts did not impose such sentences at all, or, if they did, the penalties of convicted defendants were often mitigated by higher courts on appeal; in the final instance, the monarch also granted clemency on numerous occasions. In the present study, we present two cases of robbery-murder from the southern Great Plain dating from 1877 and 1884, the perpetrators of which ultimately met their end on the gallows.