Since the introduction of this provision, courts may in extreme cases declare special gravity of guilt which is meant and popularized as life without parole. In 2017 the German Federal Constitutional Court, in its verdict on the attempt to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany, considered the party's demand for a referendum on the reintroduction of capital punishment as anti-constitutional and incompatible with the liberal democratic basic order. Hesse & Bavaria Although article 21.1 of the constitution of the German state of Hesse provided capital punishment for high crimes, this provision was inoperative due to the federal ban on the death penalty ("Bundesrecht bricht Landesrecht." (article 31 GG) – Federal law overrides state law.). The capital punishment provision was finally scrapped from Hesse's state constitution in 2018 by popular vote, with 83% of the votes in favor. The Bavarian Constitution, while not providing the death penalty by itself, for a long time contained a rule of implementation of it which was abrogated in a summary constitutional amendment in 1998. History Holy Roman Empire In the Holy Roman Empire, high justice originally was reserved to the king. From the 13th century, it was transferred to the king's vassals along with their fiefs. The first codification of capital punishment was the Halsgerichtsordnung passed by Maximilian I in 1499, followed in 1507 by the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis. Both codes formed the basis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (CCC), passed in 1532 under Charles V. In the Habsburg monarchy, all regional codes were superseded by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana in 1768. Confederation and Reich 1849–1933 If the German constitution enacted by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849 had come into force, capital punishment would have been abolished in most cases, since Art. III § 139 of the constitution stated: "Die Todesstrafe, ausgenommen wo das Kriegsrecht sie vorschreibt, oder das Seerecht im Fall von Meutereien sie zuläßt, [...], [ist] abgeschafft" ("Capital punishment, except when it is prescribed by martial law or permitted by the law of the seas in cases of mutiny, [...] [is] abolished"). These lines were deleted in the constitution for the Erfurt Union of 1849/1850. Historian Christopher Clark noted that the death penalty was not very prevalent in Prussia. His work compared the number of executions in Prussia to the number in England and Wales in the first half of the 19th century, which together had about the same population as Prussia.