treason. Although the Garda Síochána 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. Republicans were prosecuted for lesser offences under the Offences against the State Acts 1939–1998. Developments since 1937 The 1937 constitution's definition of treason was influenced by Article Three of the United States Constitution. The pre-independence statutes relating to treason were not explicitly abolished until the Statute Law Revision Act 1983, but were incompatible with the 1937 constitution. 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 1964 abolished capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland generally, but retained it for treason and several other crimes. The Criminal Justice Act 1990 abolished the death penalty completely and set the punishment for treason at life imprisonment, with parole in not less than forty years. The 1996 report of the Constitution Review Group considered the case for removing or altering the definition of treason in Article 39, and recommended no change. In 2010, in the context of the Irish financial crisis, the Green Party introduced a private member's bill to define the crime of "economic treason" in the Constitution. References See also Irish republican legitimatism Capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland High treason in the United Kingdom Ireland Irish criminal law