Historedia
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Judgement of Death Act 1823

When
1823
Where
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Part of
Peel's Judgement of Death Act and Gaols Act reforms

The act granted judges discretion to commute mandatory death sentences to imprisonment, lifting the death penalty from 130 crimes.

Passed in 1823, the Judgement of Death Act (4 Geo. 4 c. 48) allowed judges to commute death sentences to imprisonment. It required judges to enter a death sentence on the record but permitted commutation. This act, along with four others, lifted the death penalty from 130 crimes, marking a significant shift in criminal law.

Sources

  1. Judgment of Death Act 1823 Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-03
  2. Gaols Act 1823 Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.