Administrative divisions of Lithuania Governorate (consisting of eleven districts) and Slonim Governorate, were established after the third partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just a year later, on December 12, 1796, they were merged into one governorate, called Lithuania Governorate, with capital in Vilnius. In 1801 Lithuania Governorate was split into Lithuania-Vilna Governorate and Lithuania-Grodno Governorate. Forty years later the word "Lithuania" was dropped from the two names and official maps of Europe. The territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania became known as the Northwestern Krai. In 1843 another administrative reform took place, creating Kovno Governorate out of seven western districts of the
Capital punishment in Lithuania sentences. From March 1990 to December 1998, Lithuania executed seven men by shooting with a single firearm: When Lithuania declared independence in February 1918, it inherited the 1903 criminal code of the Russian Empire. The code provided for the death penalty only for crimes against the state (for example, conspiring to intervene with the imperial succession), but military law of war provided for death penalty by shooting or hanging for some 30 different crimes including banditry, robbery, rape, and premeditated murder. When Lithuania updated its statutes in January and February 1919, the duality remained: the death penalty was abolished in