RB 54

212 large-scale change, the subjectification of criminal law, we shall, however, first take a look at the changes on the level of the Finnish Grand Duchy’s sanction system. Changes in the Criminal Sanction Systemand their Influence on the Lawof Proof What is the effect of the sanction system itself on the law of proof? Or more concretely, do judges, perhaps, tend to assume a more relaxed attitude towards binding rules of proof if the results of their discretion are less fatal? In the nineteenth-century Finnish sanction system, three essential changes occurred’^: the factual abolition of capital punishment in 1826, the statutes of 1866 and the Criminal Code of 1889. In 1826, thus, the death penalty was de facto abolished as Emperor Nicholas I issued a statute by which all death sentences would be commuted, unless the crime were directed towards the state’s security or were laesae majestae. Instead of death, the condemned was to suffer a whipping, public penance and a life sentence of forced labor in the mines of Siberia. With mitigating factors present, it was possible that the forced labor sentence could be served in Finland.*^ After 1826, no death penalties were thus enforced in Finland during peacetime. During the first half of the nineteenth century, no great interest in criminal law reforms appeared in Finland,*^ not surprisingly, in view of the primitive state of Finnish legal science in general. It is illustrative that the first incentive to reform the Criminal Code of 1734 came from the Russian side: in 1816, a committee was set to reformthe criminal statutes of the Law of 1734, and in 1835, another committee was appointed to collect and systematize the criminal statutes issued after 1734. These attempts aimed at no substantive reform of criminal procedure, nor did they result in legislation, because the committee’s proposals met staunch resistance in Finland.’^ Of the development of the Finnish nineteenth-century sanction systemin general, see Lahti 1977; Myhrberg 1978; Lappi-Seppälä 1982; and Kekkonen 1991. Blomstedt 1964 p. 424; Kvla-Marttila 1986 p. 24. On the banishments to Siberia in general, see Juntunen 1983. A proposition to abolish the death penalty was already encountered in 1809 as the Finnish Diet met for the first time in Porvoo after the annexation to the Russian Empire. The proposition was unsuccessful, however, and no more extensive discussion on the theme followed until the latter half of the century, when the actual reform of criminal law was started. See KyläMarttila 1986 pp. 21-22. Blomstedt 1964 p. 424. The codification project was part of a general plan to codify the laws of different parts of the Russian Empire in order to render the imperial administration more effective with the help of a more uniformset of norms; the Russian laws had been codified in 1832 under the supervision of Secretary of State Michail Speranski {Zvod Zakonov). See Blomstedt 1964 pp. 425—130; Tyynilä 1989; and Kekkonen 1991 pp.261-262. 17

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