Penalties of Empire

Christopher Munn's Penalties of Empire examines how judges, juries, and lawyers handled capital cases in Hong Kong during the 150 years when the death penalty was in force.

The book organizes nine chapters around major capital trials—piracies, assassinations, crimes of passion—and describes courtroom proceedings, participants, and debates over mercy and governor commutations.

Munn uses these cases as a prism to trace the evolution of criminal justice in the colony and to illuminate broader colonial dynamics such as language barriers, ethnic prejudice, and tensions between metropolitan and local pressures.

The final chapters discuss the post–World War II decline of capital punishment, its suspension in the 1960s, and formal abolition in 1993.

Throughout, Munn foregrounds how individuals within the legal system—judges, lawyers, governors—bore the costs and responsibilities of administering imperial justice.