Spanish Inquisition
Sentencing

The results of the trial could be the following:

Frequently, cases were judged in absentia. When the accused died before the trial finished, the condemned were burned in effigy. The death of an accused did not extinguish the inquisitorial actions, even up to forty years after the death. When it was considered proven that the deceased were heretics in their lifetime, their corpses were exhumed and burned, their property confiscated and the heirs disinherited.

The distribution of the punishments varied considerably over time. It is believed that sentences of death were enforced most frequently in the early stages within the long history of the Inquisition. According to García Cárcel, one of the most active courts—the court of Valencia —employed the death penalty in 40% of cases before 1530, but later that percentage dropped to 3%. By the middle of the 16th century, inquisition courts viewed torture as unnecessary and death sentences had become rare.
detectable_content:postscript, punctuation:no_comma