Abstract – This paper discusses the theme of the death penalty in the Kingdom of Italy during the 19th Century. The first part of it traces a short overview of the strong parliamentary debate around the abolition of the death penalty through the proposals for a new Penal Code. In the second part, the article investigates the relationship between the judiciary and the death penalty application by presenting the story of a Calabrian brigand, Pietro Bianco, whose execution, in 1873, came as a shock for the public opinion so that Antonio Buccellati, a famous Italian jurist, used it into an essay to sustain, once and for all, the abolition of capital punishment in the Italian criminal law system.
Keywords – death penalty, Kingdom of Italy, criminal justice, criminal law doctrine