Whereas, it frequently happens that wicked and dissolute men, resigning themselves to the dominion of inordinate passions, commit violations on the lives, liberties, and property of others, and, the secure enjoyment of these having principally induced men to enter into society, government would be defective in its principal purpose, were it not to restrain such criminal acts, by inflicting due punishments on those who perpetrate them; but it appears, at the same time, equally deducible from the purposes of society, that a member thereof, committing an inferior injury, does not wholly forfeit the protection of his fellow citizens, but, after suffering a punishment in proportion to his offence, is entitled to their protection from all greater pain, so that it becomes a duty in the legislature to arrange, in a proper scale, the crimes which it may be necessary for them to repress, and to adjust thereto a corresponding gradation of punishments.
And whereas, the reformation of offenders, though an object worthy the attention of the laws, is not effected at all by capital punishments, which exterminate instead of reforming, and should be the last melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent with the safety of their fellow citizens, which also weaken the State, by cutting off so many who, if reformed, might be restored sound members to society, who, even under a course of correction, might be rendered useful in various labors for the public, and would be living and long-continued spectacles to deter others from committing the like offences.
And forasmuch as the experience of all ages and countries hath shown, that cruel and sanguinary laws defeat their own purpose, by engaging the benevolence of mankind to withhold prosecutions, to smother testimony, or to listen to it with bias, when, if the punishment were only proportioned to the injury, men would feel it their inclination, as well as their duty, to see the laws observed.
For rendering crimes and punishments, therefore, more proportionate to each other:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no crime shall be henceforth punished by the deprivation of life or limb,[29] except those hereinafter ordained to be so punished.
[30]If a man do levy war[31] against the Commonwealth [in the same], or be adherent to the enemies of the Commonwealth [within the same],[32] giving to them aid or comfort in the Commonwealth, or elsewhere, and thereof be convicted of open deed, by the evidence of two sufficient witnesses, or his own voluntary confession, the said cases, and no[33] others, shall be adjudged treasons which extend to the Commonwealth, and the person so convicted shall suffer death, by hanging,[34] and shall forfeit his lands and goods to the Commonwealth.
If any person commit petty treason, or a husband murder his wife, a parent[35] his child, or a child his parent, he shall suffer death by hanging, and his body be delivered to Anatomists to be dissected.
Whosoever committeth murder by poisoning shall suffer death by poison.
Whosoever committeth murder by way of duel shall suffer death by hanging; and if he were the challenger, his body, after death, shall be gibbetted.[36] He who removeth it from the gibbet shall be guilty of a misdemeanor; and the officer shall see that it be replaced.
Whosoever shall commit murder in any other way shall suffer death by hanging.