Cesare Beccaria

The break with the Verri brothers proved lasting; they were never able to understand why Beccaria had left his position at the peak of success. When the Grand Duchy of Tuscany aboliCesare Beccariad the death penalty as the first nation in the world to do so it followed Beccaria's argument about the lack of utility of capital punishment not about the state's lacking the right to execute citizens. The book was the first full-scale work to tackle criminal reform and to suggest that criminal justice should conform to rational principles.

Cesare Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana (Italian: [ˈtʃɛ:zare bekkaˈri:a]; March 11 1738 – November 28 1794) was an Italian jurist philosopher and politician best known for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764) which condemned torture and the death penalty and was a founding work in the field of penology.