The Old Testament indicates that capital punishment was an appropriate punishment for certain crimes such as adultery to which we read in Leviticus 20:10: "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Later, in the time when Christ walked the earth, death was considered to be just for blasphemy, as we read in John 10:31-33: "Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, for a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy…." So too we are familiar with the story of a woman accused of adultery told in John: 8, in which the scribes and Pharisees challenge the Christ to defy the law of Moses to which they stated that the law stipulated that a woman caught in adultery shall be stoned to death, but Jesus invoked a Higher law in which he said: "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Then later, after the rapture of the Christ, Stephen was stoned to death for his blasphemy, in which we read in Acts 7:54: "When the council members heard Stephen’s speech, they were angry and furious." So clearly, from the time of Moses through the ministry of Jesus and beyond, stoning was a part of culture, whether it was legally sanctified by Roman authorities or not, to which some were indeed put to death on the spot, essentially by mob rule, for in essence being found guilty of or accused of adultery or blasphemy.
Because we live in a modern age, we read these Biblical stories, perhaps half believing them, half not, or perhaps we read them more as allegories which are not literally true but may bring forth an important hidden meaning, but in reality though, stoning was must definitely true during the Mosaic era and into the Christ era, and incredibly, stoning still exists as a form of capital punishment, as of today. That is to say, there are countries that allow the stoning of death for certain crimes, that either are still on the legal books of certain countries such as in Saudi Arabia but apparently not currently enforced, then there are also countries which still practice and sanction stoning such as Iran and Somalia, and finally we have the organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in which stoning is practiced within territories that they control.
Those countries and ISIS that use stoning as a sanctioned form of capital punishment seem to set aside this particular punishment just for those accused of adultery and for no other crimes. Additionally, the victims are almost all exclusively female, even though adultery, by definition, involves more than one party, and it also appears in the most of the cases that those that are stoning the victims are exclusively all male, so that what we are seeing is men sanctioned by some form of law, stoning women to death, because of their alleged adultery. Incredibly, it has been shown, in a particular notorious ISIS video that the actual father of the adulteress is only too willing to participate and actually throws a stone against his own daughter's head in order to help aid in killing her.
Even though the participants of stoning don't want to admit these things, stoning is essentially a form of male mob rule, in which justice is mere window dressing, for the blood lust exercised as some sort of perverse cleansing ceremony for the community, at large. The fact that a father would stone his own daughter to death, without demonstrating mercy, forgiveness, courage, or compassion, is a reflection of the sickness of that father and of that society.
As always, the taking of life, is relatively easy, especially if done in a group to which all can say they have participated and none will own up to whether it was their stone that was the telling blow. While I suppose that makes it easier for these misguided murderers to sleep well at night, when their final slumber comes, as it must, they may find that the mercy and justice they denied others, will be denied to them, in turn.