To protect their people from wanton and senseless crimes, legislators everywhere should vote against implementation of the death penalty. If they do not, the human cost could be extremely high.55 introduction in a broader focus. Then it all declines. Some cases in the latter part of the nineteenth century are raised, though they were becoming invisible in the legislation and debate, but this history does not end there. Even during the early nineteenth century, the story about a murder of this type could open with the claim that courts in the last few years had encountered a new kind of homicide, lacking all traditional motives despite that the culprit always was found. Often murderers killed strangers for motives that are lost to us.54 Assertions that a crime of this type was unknown and therefore something probably new occurred were made at intervals, especially where no new legislation or extensive debate had occurred recently. This is clearly a historical study as the more modern cases are not included. In reality they exist. Katherine van Wormer in an article has listed least eighteen people in the modern USA that committed murder in order to be executed. In a later article together with Chuk Odiak the number is said to have risen to twentytwo. Van Wormer's conclusion is to the point: And if one leaves the semi-orderly arena of the execution and only consider those acting like they were seeking to be killed by the police in a confrontation, one must wonder if they are driven by an interest of being killed or just frustration or some other unknown reason or feeling. While this study is mostly thematic in arrangement, chronology is also used sometimes. One example is that in the fourth chapter the order German states, Denmark, and Sweden is due to the chronological order of the earliest relevant legislation. Generally, this study is something of a patchwork, connecting examples from several countries and a few centuries. To make a full study of all aspects has not and will probably not be possible. Therefore, especially 54 Causes criminelles célèbres 1827 p 204. 55 Wormer 1995 (quotation p 8), Wormer and Odiak 1999, see also Reeh and Hemmingsen 2018p132. 36
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