This date in 1979 saw the last use of capital punishment in Peru. An Air Force sergeant named Julio Vargas Garayar was shot for selling classified information under the military junta of Francisco Morales Bermudez.
Peru abolished the death penalty later that same year as part of its uneasy transition to civilian rule: the country’s 1979 constitution restricted the death penalty to state offenses during wartime: treason, genocide, crimes against humanity, terrorism, war crimes, and murder.
Although Peru in subsequent years has had its share of conflict and extrajudicial executions, it has never since conducted an official execution — notwithstanding Alan Garcia‘s mid-2000s rumblings about amending the constitution to reintroduce the death penalty for child rape.
On this day..
- 1877: Dato Maharaja Lela, Perak War rebel
- 1823: Giles East
- 1875: A day in the death penalty on opposite sides of Pennsylvania
- 1905: John Johnson
- 1922: Eleuterio Corral and Rumaldo Losano, escapees
- 2013: Alireza Mafiha and Mohammad Ali Sorouri, viral video stars
- 1964: Preap In, Khmer Serei operative
- 1880: Andrew Scott and Thomas Rogan, bushrangers
- 250: Pope St. Fabian
- 1677: William Drummond, for Bacon's Rebellion
- 1758: Francois Macandal, forgotten black messiah
- Feast Day of St. Sebastian