death sentence vs death warrant

death sentence

noun
  • A decree that someone be put to death as a punishment for a crime; a sentence of execution. 

  • Anything that spells death. 

death warrant

noun
  • An official warrant that authorizes capital punishment. 

  • That which definitively spells the end of something. 

How often have the words death sentence and death warrant occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )