The 1991 penal code based on Sharia law prescribes both the death penalty and corporal punishment.

The 1991 Penal Code based on Sharia law prescribes both the death penalty and corporal punishment. 
The crimes punishable by death are murder, terrorism, armed robbery, rape, drug trafficking, weapons possession and smuggling, treason, acts which may endanger the independence or unity of the state, waging war against the state, apostasy and prostitution.
Retributive crimes (homicide and crimes against any person’s physical integrity) allow for the family of the victim to choose between retribution and blood money. Those considered hudud(crimes against God) are adultery (Zina), use of alcohol, apostasy, defamation regarding chastity, armed robbery and theft of capital.
In August 2005, the interim Constitution of the Republic of Sudan amplified the use of the death penalty. Article 36 established that “the death penalty may be inflicted as retribution or punishment for serious crimes as considered by law” and in the case of minors “the death penalty can be applied to minors under the age of 18 [...] in cases of retribution or Hudud.”
In accordance with Sharia law, the Criminal Act provides for physical punishments including flogging, amputation, stonings, and crucifixion – and, in these cases, the public display of the body after execution.
Under article 146 of Sudan 's 1991 Penal Code, "Whoever commits the offence of adultery shall be punished with:
a) execution by stoning when the offender is married (muhsan);
b) One hundred lashes of the whip when the offender is not married (non-muhsan);
c) The male non-married offender may be punished, in addition to whipping, with expatriation for one year".
Article 171 of the Penal code states that whoever commits theft (alsargha alhadiyha), may be sentenced with amputation of the right hand if the value of the stolen items is equal to or more than the value of 4.25 grams of gold. 
These punishments are inconsistent with international human rights law under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that Sudan has ratified, and the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) to which the Government of Sudan is a signatory.
Sudan has an authoritarian government in which all effective political power is in the hands of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who has controlled the Government since he led a military coup in 1989, with the instigation and support of the fundamentalist National Islamic front (NIF).
The country is emerging from a 21-year civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the Animist and Christian south. The conflict is said to have caused the death of 1.5 million to 2 million people. After two years of negotiation the government and rebels signed a comprehensive peace deal in January 2005. Under the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the South was granted regional autonomy along with guaranteed representation in a national power-sharing government. The agreement also provided for a referendum in the south on independence in 2011, in which 99% of southern Sudanese voted to split from Sudan.
The Republic of South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011, following the January referendum.But while the government and southern rebels inched closer to peace, fighting broke out in the western region of Darfur in early 2003 when rebels seeking greater autonomy began an insurrection. More than 1.5 million people have fled their homes and tens of thousands of people have been killed. Pro-government Arab militias are accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab groups in the region. The Government of Sudan has, since May 2003, been responsible for the repression of the civilian population of Darfur because of insurrectionist movements present in the region. The military and militias known as janjaweed,through a campaign of killing, torture, rape and razing, have forced the exodus of almost two million people seeking refuge in Chad and more remote and secure villages. The number of dead is uncertain. United Nations sources speak of 200,000 victims, but other sources place the number at 400,000 deaths.
In June 2008, Sudan set up special courts in Omdurman and Khartoum with the expressed purpose of handing out justice to Darfur “rebels” for their alleged involvement in the Justice and Equality Movement(JEM) 10 May attacks on the capital’s twin city of Omdurman that killed more than 222 people. More than 100 JEM rebels received the death penalty for the attacks. However, President Omar al-Bashir later remitted many of the sentences.
In November 2011, JEM joined the rebel Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance between Sudanese factions opposed to the government led by President Omar al-Bashir. Besides the JEM, the alliance brings together the two other major rebel groups in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, with the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Southern Kordofan. Executions and death sentences for “terrorism” handed down in the cases of Darfur rebels continued in 2011 and 2012.
Human Rights Watch(HRW) firmly criticized the use of special courts in the Sudan: “they don’t even meet minimal fair trial standards, and yet they have the power to sentence people to death.”
The United Nations voiced concern over the trials that sentenced to death alleged Darfur rebels for the attacks on the capital and urged Khartoum to abolish capital punishment: “it would appear” that the accused were given access to lawyers only after trials began, and that confessions were extracted while they were held incommunicado and without legal advice.
The International Secretariat of the World organization Against Torture (OMCT) was strongly preoccupied by reports of torture and ill-treatment in detention. 
Amnesty International called these trials a “sham”: “Most of those that have been taken before the courts have alleged that they’ve been tortured and that they’ve been forced to confess... and in most cases they’ve actually (first) seen their lawyers on the day of the hearing.”
In 2005, the Security Council handed over responsibility for judging crimes against humanity committed in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. On 4 March 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Al Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the massacres in Darfur. The accusation of genocide was dismissed. A spokesperson for the ICC, Laurence Blairon, detailed that the arrest warrant regarded five charges of crimes against humanity and two for war crimes, including homicide, extermination, forced migration, torture and rape.
The death penalty has also been used in the context of the conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.
On March 13, 2014 the Special Court in Sinja, the capital of Sennar State, sentenced seventeen people to death in absentia. Among those sentenced to be executed by hanging were Malik Agar, formerly Blue Nile State Governor, who is chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), and Yassir Arman, who is secretary general of the movement which has been fighting in South Kordofan and Blue Nile for almost three years. On August 5, 2014 the Court of Appeal in Sinja upheld the judgment of the Court of First Instance and the death penalties in absentia for all of them.
On July 5, 2014 the criminal court of Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur, sentenced 12 members of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdel Wahid El Nur (SLM-AW), to death by hanging. They were taken prisoner during the battle of Faga Dakoh in Central Darfur in April, Mustafa Tambour, military spokesman for the SLM-AW, explained to Radio Dabanga. Tambour described the trial as “incompatible with the rules of justice”. “The rebel troops should be treated as prisoners of war.” The convicted rebels were identified as El Rashid Mousa, Izzeldin Omar, Muawya Omar, Abdallah Abakar, Ahmed Hussein Gbabshan, El Nazir Abdallah Ahmed, Adam Idris, Ahmed Abakar, Ali Khamis Ahmed Abdel Karim, Mohamed Abdel Karim Ahmed, Mohamed Mousa El Nur Ahmed, and Ahmed Mousa Saleh.
On July 7, 2014 the Special Court in Sinja sentenced three more rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) to death by hanging, a lawyer for the accused said. Defense lawyer El Tijani Hassan, a member of the Sudanese Organization for the Defense of Rights and Freedom described the verdict by Judge Abdel Munim Yunis as unfair given what he called the unfounded charges against the accused. Some confessions were made under coercion, threat and torture in the prison, he claimed. Also SPLM-N spokesman Mubarak Ardol denounced the verdict. It’s unfair that the judges handling the case belong to the ruling party, which makes the judicial system far from independent, he told APA.
On September 16, 2014 Sudan hanged two people convicted over the killing of Chinese oil workers and damaging an oil pipeline in troubled South Kordofan State six years ago. They were executed at the Federal Kober Prison in Khartoum, Sudanese Ministry of Justice confirmed in a statement. They were fighters of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) found guilty of killing the Chinese workers who were working at the Abu Dafra oil field in West Kordofan in 2008. JEM strongly condemned the execution of the convicts whom he described as freedom fighters. JEM spokesman Jibril Adam Bilal claimed none of its ex combatants were involved in the death of the Chinese and described the trial of the pair as politically motivated. On October 18, 2008 nine Chinese oil workers and a Sudanese driver were said to have been abducted from the Abu Dafra oilfield. The bodies of five Chinese workers were found a few days later near the area where they were abducted. The conflict in the State of Southern Kordofan broke out in June 2011 between government forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army–North (SPLA-N), the military wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N).
On May 29, 2013 authorities in El-Obeid prison in Northern Kordofan State hanged four people convicted of killing a farmer in Hamra Al-Sheikh locality. According to Akhir Lahza newspaper, the hanging took place amidst tight security and was witnessed by relatives of the deceased farmer, who declined to waive their rights to witness retribution for their kin. After the execution the prison authorities handed over the corpses of the four convicts to their respective families. The four were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to death by an El-Obeid court. In total, five people were convicted of the death of the farmer but the other one was executed in April.
In January 2010, Sudan approved the Child Act of 2010, rising the age at which an offender can face capital punishment from 15 to 18. However, in October 2010, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed serious concerns that “under article 36 of the Sudan Interim Constitution, the death penalty may be imposed on persons below the age of 18 in cases of retribution or hudud.” In fact, Article 36 (2) of the Interim Constitution, approved on July 8, 2005, states that: “The death penalty shall not be imposed on a person under the age of eighteen or a person who has attained the age of seventy except in cases of retribution or hudud.”
This last exception makes the first safeguard almost worthless; for instance hudud crimes include murder and burglary over a certain amount, according to the 1991 Sudanese Penal Code.
Such exceptions in the new constitution contravene the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Sudan, stipulating that capital punishment should not be imposed for offences committed by persons below 18 years of age.
In 2011, death sentences of minors were upheld but not carried out in Sudan which along with Iran and Saudi Arabia, was one of the only three countries in the world that executed a minor in 2009. In May 2009, 19-year-old Abdulrahman Zakaria Mohammed was executed in El Fasher, North Darfur, after he was found guilty of armed robbery and murder two years earlier. On November 29, 2011, seven prisoners in North Darfur had their death sentences upheld by the Special Court in North Darfur.
Two of them were under 18 at the time of the alleged crime. They are Abdelrazig Abdessed and Daoud Ibrahim Shareef Youssef, sentenced to death on October 21, 2010 by Judge Shegifa Ali Eshag of the South Darfur Special Criminal Court for alleged membership of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and a carjacking in Khour Baskawit, South Darfur, on May 13, 2010.
The Supreme Court in Khartoum had ordered a retrial due to the inclusion of minors in that trial. 
According to Amnesty International, there were at least 21 executions and at least 29 death sentences in 2013 and at least 19 executions and 199 death sentences were reported in 2012. In 2011, there were at least 7 executions and 17 death sentences. In 2010, Sudan hanged at least 8 people, while at least 54 were sentenced to death.
At least nine people were hanged in 2009, while another five hangings were carried out in 2008.
In May 2011, the UN Human Rights Council under the Universal Periodic Review recommended that Sudan adhere to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR aimed at abolishing the death penalty; to move towards abolition of the death penalty; to establish a moratorium on executions; to commute death sentences to appropriate alternative sanctions; to respect international standards regarding the death penalty, particularly to ensure that it will only be applied to the most severe crimes and to individuals who are more than 18 years of age at the time of the act and to prohibit executions of minors pursuant to the Children’s Act of 2010. Sudan accepted the recommendation to prohibit the application of death penalty on young people under age 18, but rejected the others, stating that: “In compliance with Sudan’s commitment under the ICCPR the death penalty in Sudanese laws is confined to the most serious crimes. In murder cases there is room for pardoning by the relatives of the deceased and in such cases the death penalty will not be imposed.” Sudan also rejected those recommendations calling for the abolition of corporal punishment from the penal code.
On December 18, 2014, Sudan voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.