<P> When a minister of the fifth grade or above received a death sentence the emperor might grant him a special dispensation allowing him to commit suicide in lieu of execution . Even when this privilege was not granted, the law required that the condemned minister be provided with food and ale by his keepers and transported to the execution ground in a cart rather than having to walk there . </P> <P> Nearly all executions under the Tang dynasty took place in public as a warning to the population . The heads of the executed were displayed on poles or spears . When local authorities decapitated a convicted criminal, the head was boxed and sent to the capital as proof of identity and that the execution had taken place . </P> <P> In medieval and early modern Europe, before the development of modern prison systems, the death penalty was also used as a generalized form of punishment . During the reign of Henry VIII of England, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed . </P> <P> In early modern Europe, a massive moral panic regarding witchcraft swept across Europe and later the European colonies in North America . During this period, there were widespread claims that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom . As a result, tens of thousands of women were prosecuted for witchcraft and executed through the witch trials of the early modern period (between the 15th and 18th centuries). </P>

When did capital punishment begin in the united states