Atfer a short survey of the discussion of death penalty from the second half, of the 18th century onward, and the development of the related legislation in different European states, the author presents the echoes of the discussion of death penalty in Austria between 1848—1878 in periodicals in Slovenia. The author has come to a conclusion that demands to do away with the death penalty in the described period in Slovenia did not meet a positive response, on the contrary, a sharp criticism of liberal reforms of penal laws in the sixties and seventies of the 19th century and reports on death penalties which were carried out, show that these demands for abolishment of death penalty were not favourably viewed in the territory of Slovenia. A very isolated move was made by a then student of law, and later on a well-known Slovene publicist, Karl Slane, who rejected the prevailing views about crimes and punishment in the newspaper Slovenski narod in 1876. Slane also called the readers’ attention to social causes of criminal acts, and it is probably him who strongly and in principle rejected penalty of death in Slovenia.