different realities and reactions At least two executions because of crimes of this kind took place in Denmark in the nineteenth century, both related to the major prison in Horsens. In 1858 Peter Ludvig Thorwald Tofte was sentenced to prison for life for burglary and arson. He wanted to end his penalty through death and tried both to kill himself and attack the prison staff. It rendered him pardons and corporal punishments. The third time no pardon was given, and he was executed on the execution site of the town of Horsens February 20th 1865.536 On November 8th 1892 there was again an execution of a prisoner in Horsens, but this time in the prison yard. Jens Nielsen became the last person to be decapitated in Denmark. At his death he was twenty-nine years old and had spent much of his life at juvenile facilities and prisons. At the age of twenty-two he had been sentenced to life, at that time in reality sixteen years, for five arson attacks aimed to draw attention from his thefts.Placed in Horsens he committed three serious attacks on prison staff and was sentenced to death for them. The first sentence in 1885 surprised many as an old and seldom employed law was used, but, despite the sentence being confirmed by the higher courts, Nielsen was pardoned by the king ChristianIX, not surprisingly as neither he nor the queen approved of the penalty of death. The repeated pardoning of Nielsen and of murderers in 1891 led the ministry of justice and the public to the impression that the penalty of death in Denmark in reality was abolished. The first two occasions Nielsen was pardoned to life in prison, but the third time he was executed.537 In 1892, the ordinance of 1767 was invoked by two of the judges in the supreme court of Denmark to argue for the pardoning of Jens Nielsen because he had committed his crime in order to be executed.538 Nielsen could not stand life in prison, especially as he had been isolated after the first attack on the guards, and then sub536 Tage-Jensen 1942 p 71 sq. 537 Stuckenberg 1893 p 23 sq, Udsholt og Udsholt 1987 p 93 sqq. Duedahl 2016 p 247, 267 sq, 296, 310 sqq. The law used to sentence Nielsen to death for attacking prison guards after the execution have been studied by Danish judicial experts finding the law not possible to use as it was designed solely for crimes at a specific, then defunct, prison, Duedahl 2016 p315. 538 Duedahl 2016 p 305. 153
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