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For other uses, see Treason (disambiguation) or Traitor (disambiguation).
In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour. Traitor may also mean a person who betrays (or is accused of betraying) their own political party, nation, family, friends, ethnic group, religion, social class, or other group to which they may belong. Often, such accusations are controversial and disputed, as the person may not identify with the group of which they are a member, or may otherwise disagree with the group leaders making the charge. See, for example, race traitor.
Murder is now generally considered the worst of crimes, but in the past, treason was thought of as worse. In English law, high treason was until the Treason Act 1814 punishable by hanging, drawing, and quartering (men) or burning (women), the only crime which attracted those penalties. In fact the punishment was devised by King Edward I to punish the leaders of resistance to his invasions of Wales and Scotland, which were separate countries before he invaded them. In both cases the charge of treason was questionable, especially in the case of William Wallace of Scotland.[citation needed] The penalty was used by later monarchs against people who could reasonably be called traitors, although most modern jurists would call it excessive. In Shakespeare's play King Lear (c. 1600), when the King learns that his daughter Regan has publicly dishonoured him, he says They could not, would not do 't; 'tis worse than murder: a conventional attitude at that time. In Dante's Inferno, the lowest circles of Hell are reserved for traitors; Judas, who betrayed Jesus in Christian theology, suffers the worst torments of all. His treachery is in fact so notorious that his name has long been synonymous with traitor, a fate he shares with Benedict Arnold, Pétain, Quisling, Alcibiades of Athens, and Ephialtes, who betrayed the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.
AustraliaThe Australian Criminal Code defines treason as follows:
The penalty for treason is life imprisonment. CanadaThe Canadian Criminal Code has two degrees of treason, called "high treason" and "treason." However both of these belong to the historical category of high treason, as opposed to petty treason which does not exist in Canadian law.
It is also illegal for a Canadian citizen to do any of the above outside Canada. The penalty for high treason is life imprisonment. The penalty for treason is imprisonment up to a maximum of life, or up to 14 years for conduct under subsection (2)(b) or (e) in peacetime. New ZealandNew Zealand has treason laws that are stipulated under the Crimes Act 1961. Section 73 of the Crimes Act reads as follows:
The penalty is life imprisonment, except that the maximum for conspiracy is 14 years. Treason was the last capital crime in New Zealand law, with the death penalty not being revoked until 1989, years after it was abolished for murder. Very few people have been prosecuted for the act of treason in New Zealand and none have been prosecuted in recent years. [5] IrelandArticle 39 of the Constitution of Ireland (adopted in 1937) states that "treason shall consist only in levying war against the State, or assisting any State or person or inciting or conspiring with any person to levy war against the State, or attempting by force of arms or other violent means to overthrow the organs of government established by the Constitution, or taking part or being concerned in or inciting or conspiring with any person to make or to take part or be concerned in any such attempt." The Treason Act 1939 gave legislative effect to Article 39, and provided for the imposition of the death penalty on persons convicted of committing treason within the state and on citizens convicted of committing treason against Ireland outside of the state. The Act also created the ancillary offences of encouraging, harbouring and comforting persons guilty of treason, and the offence of misprision of treason. No person has been charged under this Act. The Criminal Justice Act 1990 removed the death penalty for treason convictions, setting the punishment at life imprisonment, with parole in not less than forty years. Before 1937Section 1(1) of the Treasonable Offences Act 1925 (enacted under the 1922 Constitution) defined treason as: (a) levying war against Saorstát Éireann, or (b) assisting any state or person engaged in levying war against Saorstát Éireann, or (c) conspiring with any person (other than his or her wife or husband) or inciting any person to levy war against Saorstát Éireann, or (d) attempting or taking part or being concerned in an attempt to overthrow by force of arms or other violent means the Government of Saorstát Éireann as established by or under the Constitution, or (e) conspiring with any person (other than his or her wife or husband) or inciting any person to make or to take part or be concerned in any such attempt. The maximum punishment was death. The Act also defined the offences of misprision of treason and of encouraging, harbouring, or comforting any person engaged in levying Saorstát Éireann or engaged, taking part, or concerned in any attempt to overthrow by force of arms or other violent means the Government of Saorstát Éireann as established by or under the Constitution of 1922. The Treasonable Offences Act 1925 was the first comprehensive and permanent measure designed to deal with offences against the state. Section 3 reenacted portions of the Treason Felony Act 1848, while sections 4 and 5 dealt, respectively, with the usurpation of executive authority and assemblies pretending to parliamentary functions. Section 6 prohibited the formation of pretended military or police forces and section 7 proscribed unauthorised drilling. Although Gardaí prosecuted a number of persons under section 1.1(d) in 1925 and 1926, the Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, believed that such serious charges were not 'desirable in the present conditions'. Rather more bluntly, in March 1930 Eoin O'Duffy, the Garda Commissioner, wrote that the prospect of charging IRA members with 'levying war against the State' or with usurping executive authority would make a 'laughing stock' of the Gardaí. United Kingdom
The British law of treason is entirely statutory and has been so since the Treason Act 1351 (25 Edw. 3 St. 5 c. 2). The Act is written in Norman French, but is more commonly cited in its English translation. The Treason Act 1351 has since been amended several times, and currently provides for four categories of treasonable offences, namely:
Another Act, the Treason Act 1702 (1 Anne stat. 2 c. 21), provides for a fifth category of treason, namely:
By virtue of the Treason Act 1708, the law of treason in Scotland is the same as the law in England, save that in Scotland counterfeiting the Great Seal of Scotland and the slaying of the Lords of Session and Lords of Justiciary were adjudged treason until 1945. Treason is a reserved matter about which the Scottish Parliament is prohibited from legislating. The penalty for treason was changed from death to a maximum of imprisonment for life in 1998 under the Crime And Disorder Act. Before 1998, the death penalty was mandatory, subject to the royal prerogative of mercy. William Joyce was the last person to be put to death for treason, in 1946. (On the following day Theodore Schurch was executed for treachery, a similar crime, and was the last man to be executed for a crime other than murder in the UK.) As to who can commit treason, it depends on the ancient notion of allegiance. As such, British citizens (and British subjects who were Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies) wherever they may be owe allegiance to the Queen, as do aliens present in the United Kingdom at the time of the treasonable act (except diplomats and foreign invading forces), those who hold a British passport however obtained, and by aliens who - having lived in Britain and gone abroad again - have left behind family and belongings. International influenceThe Treason Act 1695 enacted, among other things, a rule that treason could be proved only in a trial by the evidence of two witnesses to the same overt act. Nearly one hundred years later this rule was incorporated into the US Constitution. It also provided for a three year time limit on bringing prosecutions for treason (except for assassinating the king), another rule which has been imitated in some common law countries. The Treason Act 1795 made it treason to imprison, restrain or wound the king. Although this law was repealed in the United Kingdom in 1998 it still continues to apply in some Commonwealth countries. United StatesTo avoid the abuses of the English law (including executions by Henry VIII of those who criticized his repeated marriages), treason was specifically defined in the United States Constitution, the only crime so defined. Article Three defines treason as levying war against the United States or "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort," and requires the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction. Congress has, at times, passed statutes creating treason-like offense with different names (such as sedition in the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, or espionage and sabotage in the 1917 Espionage Act) that do not require the testimony of two witnesses and have a much broader definition than Article Three treason. For example, some well-known spies have been convicted of espionage rather than treason. The Constitution does not itself create the offense; it only restricts the definition. The crime is prohibited by legislation passed by Congress. Therefore the United States Code at 18 U.S.C. § 2381 states "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States." The requirement of testimony of two witnesses was inherited from the British Treason Act 1695. In the history of the United States there have been fewer than 40 federal prosecutions for treason and even fewer convictions. Several men were convicted of treason in connection with the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion but were pardoned by President George Washington. The most famous treason trial, that of Aaron Burr in 1807 (See Burr conspiracy), resulted in acquittal. Politically motivated attempts to convict opponents of the Jeffersonian Embargo Acts and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 all failed. Most states have provisions in their constitutions or statutes similar to those in the U.S. Constitution. There have been only two successful prosecutions for treason on the state level, that of Thomas Dorr in Rhode Island and that of John Brown in Virginia. After the American Civil War, no person involved with the Confederate States of America was tried for treason, though a number of leading Confederates (including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee) were indicted. Those who had been indicted received a blanket amnesty issued by President Andrew Johnson when he left office in 1869. Several people generally thought of as traitors in the United States, including Jonathan Pollard, the Walker Family, Robert Soblen, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were not prosecuted for treason, but rather for espionage. John Walker Lindh, an American citizen who fought with the Taliban against the US-supported Northern Alliance, was convicted of conspiracy to murder US nationals rather than treason. The Cold War saw frequent associations between treason and support for (or insufficient hostility toward) Communist-backed causes. The most memorable of these came from Senator Joseph McCarthy, who characterized the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations as "twenty years of treason." McCarthy also investigated various government agencies for Soviet spy rings; however, he acted as a political fact-finder rather than criminal prosecutor. Despite such rhetoric, the Cold War period saw few prosecutions for treason. On October 11, 2006, a federal grand jury issued the first indictment for treason against the United States since 1952, charging Adam Yahiye Gadahn for videos in which he spoke supportively of al-Qaeda. List of people convicted of treason, by countrySee also
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