Capital punishment in Portugal


was a pioneer in the process of abolition of capital punishment. No executions have been carried out since 1846, with the formal abolishment of capital punishment for civil crimes occurring in 1867.
The method of capital punishment used in Portugal was by hanging.
Portugal was the first country in the world to begin the process to abolish the death penalty, abolishing it in stages – for political crimes in 1852, for all crimes except the military in 1867, and for all crimes in 1911. In 1916 Portugal entered in World War I and it was re-established only for military crimes in war time with a foreign country and only in the theater of war. With the new Constitution in 1976, it was again abolished for all crimes.
The last execution in Portugal took place in Lagos in 1846. The execution of a soldier of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps carried out in France during World War I was poorly documented until recently; soldier :pt:João Augusto Ferreira de Almeida|João Augusto Ferreira de Almeida, executed by firing squad on 16 September 1917, was issued a "moral rehabilitation" by the Council of Ministers and the President of the Republic in 2017 — the action was purely symbolic, and not a reappreciation of the facts of the case, an exoneration, or a pardon; merely the "rehabilitation of the memory of a soldier convicted to a sentence contrary to human rights and the values and principles that have been long ingrained in Portuguese society."
In the 2008 European Values Study, 51.6% of respondents in Portugal said the death penalty can never be justified, while only 1.5% said it can be always justified.