Capital punishment in Sweden

Capital punishment in Sweden was practiced until 1910. It is now outlawed by the Swedish Constitution which clearly states that capital punishment, corporal punishment, and torture are strictly prohibited. At the time of the abolition of the death penalty in Sweden, the legal method of execution was beheading.

The clause that prohibits the death penalty has been a part of the Constitution since 1975. Sweden is a state party to the Second Optional Protocol to ICCPR (ratified in 1990), Protocol No. 6 to ECHR (1984), and Protocol No. 13 to ECHR (2003).

In the Riksdag of the Estates, a majority of the peasants worked for the abolition of the death penalty, for example when the new penalty code of 1864 was discussed.

Two titles were used for the official who carried out the execution. Skarprättare, who carried out beheadings and Bödel, who carried out other types of capital punishment. Originally beheading by sword was reserved for nobels, where as commoners could be beheaded by axe or hanged. By the 18th century all beheadings were made by axe, for commoners and nobles alike, and some crimes such as forgery always carried the punishment of hanging. During the 19th century, each province of Sweden along with the City of Stockholm had an appointed executioner who travelled the area to carry out executions. In 1900, a national executioner (Swedish: riksskarprättare) was appointed, a position that was filled by the last executioner Albert Gustaf Dahlman who until then had been responsible for carrying out executions in .

Johan Alfred Ander was the last person executed in Sweden. He was sentenced to death for a murder during the course of a robbery that was committed in January 1910. His sentence was not commuted and he was executed 23 November at Långholmen in using a guillotine (the only time a guillotine was used in Sweden). The executioner was Albert Gustaf Dahlman, who died in 1920. At his death at 72, he was the last of all executioners in Sweden. It has been suggested that the difficulties in finding a person to carry out this kind of work might have been one of the reasons for the abolishment of capital punishment one year later.

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