Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a
ligature. The
Oxford English
Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is
"specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", although
it formerly also referred to
crucifixion
and death by
impalement in which the body
would remain "hanging".
For lack of a better term,
hanging has also been used to
describe a method of
suicide in which a
person applies a ligature to the neck and brings about
unconsciousness and then death, by means of partial suspension or
partial weight-bearing on the ligature. This method has been most
often used in prisons or other institutions, where full suspension
support is difficult to devise. The earliest known use of the word
in this sense was in
A.D. 1300.
Methods of judicial hanging
There are four ways of performing a judicial hanging — the short
drop, suspension hanging, the standard drop, and the long drop. A
mechanised form of hanging, the
upright
jerker, was also experimented with in the 18th century.
Short drop
The short drop is done by placing the condemned prisoner on the
back of a cart, horse, or other vehicle, with the noose around the
neck. The object is then moved away, leaving the person dangling
from the rope. The condemned prisoner dies of strangulation,
typically between ten and twenty minutes. Before 1850, it was the
main method. A ladder was also commonly used with the condemned
being forced to ascend, after which the noose was tied and the
ladder pulled away or turned, leaving the condemned hanging.
Another method involves using a stool, which the condemned is
required to stand on, being kicked away.
Standard drop
The standard drop, which arrived as calculated in English units,
involves a drop of between four and six feet (1.2 to 1.8 m) and
came into use from
1866, when the scientific
details were published by an Irish doctor,
Samuel Haughton. Immediately its use spread
to English-speaking countries and those where judicial systems had
an English origin. It was considered a humane improvement on the
short drop because it was intended to be enough to break the
person's neck, causing immediate paralysis and immobilization (and
probable immediate unconsciousness).
This method was used
to execute condemned Nazis under United States
jurisdiction after the Nuremberg Trials
including Joachim
von Ribbentrop and Ernst
Kaltenbrunner.
Nazis executed under British jurisdiction, including
Josef Kramer,
Fritz Klein,
Irma
Grese and
Elisabeth
Volkenrath, were hanged by
Albert
Pierrepoint using the variable drop method devised by
William Marwood.
Long drop
This process, also known as the measured drop, was introduced to
Britain in 1872 by
William Marwood
as a scientific advancement to the standard drop. Instead of
everyone falling the same standard distance, the person's height,
weight and strength were used to determine how much slack would be
provided in the rope so that the distance dropped would be enough
to ensure that the neck was broken but not so much that the person
was decapitated.
Prior to 1892, the drop was between four and ten feet (about one to
three metres), depending on the weight of the body, and was
calculated to deliver a force of 1,260
lbf
(5,600
newton or 572
kgf), which fractured the neck at either the 2nd and 3rd
or 4th and 5th
cervical
vertebrae.
However, this force resulted in some decapitations, such as the famous case of
"Black Jack" Tom Ketchum in New Mexico
Territory in 1901. Between 1892 and 1913,
the length of the drop was shortened to avoid decapitation. After
1913, other factors were also taken into account, and the force
delivered was reduced to about 1,000 lbf (4,400 N or 450 kgf).
The
decapitation of Eva Dugan during a botched hanging in 1930 led the
state of Arizona
to switch to
the gas chamber as its primary execution
method, on the grounds that it was believed more humane. One
of the more recent decapitations as a result of the long drop
occurred when
Barzan Ibrahim
al-Tikriti was hanged in Iraq in 2007.
Suicide by hanging.
As suicide
Hanging is a common method for committing
suicide. The materials necessary for suicide by
hanging are easily available to the average person, compared with
firearms or lethal poison. It is a deceptively simple yet highly
effective suicide method. Full suspension is not required, and for
this reason hanging is especially commonplace among suicidal
prisoners. A type of hanging comparable to
full suspension hanging may be obtained by self-strangulation using
a ligature of the neck and only partial weight of the body (partial
suspension).
In
Canada
, hanging is the most common method of suicide, and
in the U.S., hanging is the second most common method, after
firearms. In the United Kingdom, where firearms are less
easily available, as of 2001 hanging was the most common method
among men and the second-most commonplace among women (after
poisoning).
Medical effects
A hanging may induce one or more of the following medical
conditions, some leading to death:
The cause of death in hanging depends on the conditions related to
the event. When the body is released from a relatively high
position, death is usually caused by severing the spinal cord
between C1 and C2, which may be functional decapitation. High
cervical fracture frequently occurs in judicial hangings, and in
fact the C1-C2 fracture has been called the "
hangman's fracture" in medicine, even
when it occurs in other circumstances. Usually, accidental C1-C2
fracture victims do not immediately become unconscious; instead
death occurs after some minutes. Another process that has been
suggested is
carotid sinus reflex
death. By this theory, the mechanical stimulation of the
carotid sinus in the neck brings on terminal cardiac arrest.
In the absence of fracture and dislocation, occlusion of blood
vessels becomes the major cause of death, rather than
asphyxiation. Obstruction of venous drainage of the
brain via occlusion of the internal jugular veins leads to
cerebral edema and then
cerebral ischemia. The face will typically
become engorged and
cyanotic (turned blue
through lack of oxygen). There will be the classic sign of
strangulation—
petechiae—little blood marks
on the face and in the eyes from burst blood capillaries. The
tongue may protrude.
Compromise of the cerebral blood flow may occur by obstruction of
the carotid arteries, even though their obstruction requires far
more force than the obstruction of jugular veins, since they are
seated deeper and they contain blood in much higher pressure
compared to the jugular veins. Only 31 newtons (7 lbf or 3.2 kgf)
of force may be enough to constrict the carotid arteries to the
point of rapid unconsciousness. Where death has occurred through
carotid artery obstruction or cervical fracture, the face will
typically be pale in color and not show petechiae. Many reports and
pictures exist of actual short-drop hangings that seem to show that
the person died quickly, while others indicate a slow and agonizing
death by strangulation.
When cerebral circulation is severely compromised by any mechanism,
arterial or venous, death occurs over four or more minutes from
cerebral hypoxia, although the heart may continue to beat for some
period after the brain can no longer be resuscitated. The time of
death in such cases is a matter of convention. In judicial
hangings, death is pronounced at cardiac arrest, which may occur at
times from several minutes up to 15 minutes or longer after
hanging. During suspension, once the prisoner has lapsed into
unconsciousness, rippling movements of the body and limbs may occur
for some time which are usually attributed to nervous and muscular
reflexes. In Britain, it was normal to leave the body suspended for
an hour to ensure death.
After death, the body typically shows marks of suspension: bruising
and rope marks on the neck. Moreover, sphincters will relax
spontaneously and urine and faeces will be evacuated. Forensic
experts may often be able to tell if hanging is suicide or
homicide, as each leaves a distinctive ligature mark. One of the
hints they use is the
hyoid bone. If
broken, it often means the person has been
murdered by manual
choking.
Notable references by country (political)
Hanging has been a method of
capital
punishment in many countries.
Australia
Capital punishment was a part of the legal system of
Australia from its early days as a penal colony
for the British Empire, until 1985. During the 19th century, crimes
that could carry a death sentence included
burglary, sheep stealing,
forgery,
sexual
assaults, murder and
manslaughter.
During the 19th century, there were about 80 people hanged each
year throughout Australia for these crimes.
Australia abolished the death penalty in all states by
1985.
The
last man executed by hanging (or any other means) in Australia was
Ronald Ryan on 3 February 1967, in
Victoria
.
Brazil
Death by
hanging was the customary method of capital punishment in Brazil
throughout
its history. Some important national heroes like
Tiradentes (1792) were killed by hanging. The
last man executed in Brazil was the slave Francisco, in 1876.The
death penalty was abolished for all crimes, except for those
committed under extraordinary circumstances such as war or military
law, in 1890.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria
's national
hero, Vasil Levski, was executed by
hanging by the Ottoman court in
Sofia
in 1873. Every year since Bulgaria's
liberation, thousands come with flowers
on the date of his death,
February 19,
to his monument where the gallows stood.
The last execution was in 1989, and the death penalty was abolished
for all crimes in 1998.
Canada
Historically, hanging was the only method of
execution used in Canada and was in
use as punishment for all murders until 1961, when murders were
reclassified into capital and non-capital offences. The
death penalty was restricted to only apply for certain offences to
the National Defence Act in 1976 and was completely abolished in
1998.
The last hangings in Canada took place on December 11, 1962.
Germany
In the territories occupied by
Nazi
Germany from 1939 to 1945, strangulation hanging was a
preferred means of public execution, although more criminal
executions were performed by
guillotine
than hanging. The most common sentenced were
partisan and
black marketeers, whose bodies were usually
left hanging for long periods of time. There are also numerous
reports of concentration camp inmates being hanged. Hanging was
continued in post-war Germany in the British and US Occupation
Zones under their jurisdiction, and for Nazi war criminals, until
well after (western) Germany itself had abolished the death penalty
by the
German constitution
as adopted in 1949. West-Berlin was not subject to the
"Grundgesetz" and abolished the death penalty in 1951.
The German
Democratic Republic
did not abolish the death penalty until
1987. The last execution ordered by a West German court was
carried out by guillotine in Moabit prison 1949.
The last hanging in
Germany was the one ordered of several war criminals in Landsberg am
Lech
on June 7, 1951. The last known execution in
East Germany was in 1981 by a pistol shot to the neck.
Hungary
The prime
minister of Hungary during the 1956 revolution, Imre Nagy, was secretly tried, executed by
hanging, and buried unceremoniously by the new Soviet
-backed
Hungarian government, in 1958. Nagy was later publicly
exonerated by Hungary.
Capital punishment was abolished for all crimes in 1990.
India
All executions in India are carried out by hanging.
Nathuram Godse,
Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, was executed by
hanging in 1949.
The
modern Supreme
Court of India
has suggested that capital punishment should be given only
in the "rarest of rare cases".
A recent
case of capital punishment by hanging is that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, a Security Guard
who was convicted of the 1990 murder and rape of a 14-year-old
girl, Hetal Parekh, in Kolkata
in India
. The
manner in which the crime was committed, bludgeoning the victim
with a blunt object and raping her as she was slowly dying, was
considered brutal enough by the Supreme Court of India to warrant
the death penalty. An appeal for clemency was made to the President
of India, but was turned down. Chatterjee was hanged on August 14,
2004. It was the first execution in India since 1995.
Iran
As one of several means of
capital punishment in Iran,
hangings are carried out by using an automotive telescoping
crane to hoist the condemned aloft.
The death penalty is used for many offences and is the only
punishment for rape, murder and child molestation, with all
hangings taking place in public.
On July
19, 2005, two boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz
Marhoni, ages 15 and 17 respectively, who had been convicted of
the rape of a 13-year-old boy, were publicly hanged at Edalat
(Justice) Square in Mashhad
, on charges of homosexuality and rape.On August 15, 2004, a 16-year-old girl,
Atefeh Sahaaleh (a.k.a. Ateqeh
Rajabi), was executed for having committed "acts incompatible with
chastity".
At dawn
on July 27, 2008, the Iranian Government executed a total of 29
people at Evin
Prison
in Tehran
. On 2
December 2008, an unnamed man was hanged for murder at Kazeroun
Prison, just moments before he was pardoned by the murder victim's
family, then quickly cut down and rushed to a hospital where he was
successfully revived.
Iraq
Hanging
was used under the regime of Saddam
Hussein, but was suspended along with capital punishment on
June 10, 2003, when the United States-led coalition invaded and overthrew the previous
regime. The death penalty was reinstated on August 8,
2004.
In September 2005, three murderers were the first people to be
executed since the restoration. Then on March 9, 2006, an official
of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council confirmed that Iraqi authorities
had executed the first
insurgent by
hanging.
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for
crimes against humanity on November
5, 2006, and was executed on December 30, 2006 at approximately
6:00 a.m. local time. During the drop, there was an audible crack
indicating that his neck was broken, a successful example of a long
drop hanging.
By contrast,
Barzan Ibrahim, the head
of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's security agency, and
Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former chief
judge, were executed on January 15, 2007, also by the long drop
method, but Barzan was decapitated by the rope at the end of his
fall indicating that the drop was too long.
Also, former vice-president
Taha
Yassin Ramadan had been sentenced to life in prison on November
5, 2006, but the sentence was changed to death by hanging on
February 12, 2007. He was the fourth and final man to be executed
for the 1982 crimes against humanity on March 20, 2007. This time,
the execution went smoothly and without obvious mistake or
problem.
At the Anfal genocide trial, Saddam's cousin
Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka Chemical Ali),
former defence minister
Sultan
Hashim Ahmed al-Tay, and former deputy Hussein Rashid Mohammed
were sentenced to hang for their role in the
Al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds on
June 24, 2007. Al-Majid was again sentenced to death for the 1991
suppression of a Shi'a uprising along with Abdul-Ghani Abdul Ghafur
on December 2, 2008.
Israel
Although
Israel
has
provisions in its criminal law to use the death penalty for
extraordinary crimes, it has only been used once. On May 31,
1962, Nazi leader
Adolf Eichmann was
executed by hanging.
Japan
On February 27, 2004, the mastermind of the
Sarin gas attack on the
Tokyo subway,
Shoko Asahara, was
found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
On December 25, 2006,
serial killer Hiroaki Hidaka and
three others were hanged in Japan
.
Hanging is the common method of execution in capital punishment
cases in Japan, as in the cases of
Norio
Nagayama,
Mamoru Takuma, and
Tsutomu Miyazaki.
Jordan
Death by
hanging is the traditional method of capital punishment in Jordan
.
Malaysia
Hanging
is the traditional way of capital punishment in Malaysia
.
Portugal
The last person executed by hanging in Portugal was Francisco Matos
Lobos on April 16, 1842. Before, it had been a common death
penalty.
Pakistan
In Pakistan hanging is the most common form of execution.
Russia
Similar
to many other countries, the Russian Empire
used the death penalty for a wide range of
crimes.
The death penalty was officially outlawed shortly after the
revolution of 1917, but the government later permitted the use of
the penalty for soldiers on the front. In the next several decades,
the death penalty was alternatively permitted and prohibited, but
during
Stalin's reign, the death
penalty was used in many cases. The last persons to be sentenced to
death by hanging were
Andrey Vlasov
and 11 other officers of his army on August 1, 1946. Numerous
executions from that date forward were carried out by gunshot,
which became the standard method of capital punishment in the
Soviet Union.
In the
Russian
Federation
the death penalty is still technically allowed but
is currently under a moratorium.
Singapore
In
Singapore
, mandatory hanging using the long-drop method is
currently used as punishment for various crimes, such as drug trafficking, kidnapping and unauthorized possession of
firearms.
A 25-year old Vietnamese-Australian,
Nguyen Tuong Van, was hanged on December 2,
2005, after being convicted of drug trafficking in 2002. Numerous
efforts from both the Australian government,
Queen's Counsels and petitions from
organizations such as
Amnesty
International failed to persuade Singapore to rescind its
decision.
A 24-year
old Malaysian, Took Leng How, was
hanged on November 2, 2006, after being convicted of the murder of
Huang Na in 2004.
Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi, a Nigerian
national was sentenced to death in Singapore for
drug trafficking. He was
hanged on January 26, 2007.
United Kingdom
As a form
of judicial execution in England
, hanging is thought to date from the Anglo-Saxon period.
Records of the names of British
hangmen
begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s ; complete records
extend from the 1500s to the last hangmen,
Robert Leslie Stewart and
Harry Allen, who conducted the last British
executions in 1964.Until
1865 hangings were
performed in public.
In London, the traditional site was at
Tyburn
, a
settlement west of the City
on the main
road to Oxford
, which was
used on eight hanging days a year,
though before 1865, executions had been transferred to the street
outside Newgate
Prison
, Old
Bailey
, now the site of the Central Criminal Court.
In 1965, Parliament passed the
Murder Act,
temporarily abolishing capital punishment for murder for 5 years.
The Act was renewed in 1969, making the abolition permanent. And
with the passage of the
Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and
the
Human Rights Act 1998, the
death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both
civilian and military cases.
Following its complete abolition, the
gallows were removed from Wandsworth Prison
, where they remained in full working order until
that year.
The last woman to be hanged was
Ruth
Ellis on July 13, 1955, by
Albert
Pierrepoint who was a prominent hangman in the 20th century in
England.
The last hanging in Britain took place in
1964, when Peter Anthony Allen,
at Walton
Prison
in Liverpool
, and Gwynne Owen
Evans, at Strangeways Prison
in Manchester
were executed for the murder of John Alan West.
Silken rope
In the UK, some felons have traditionally been executed by hanging
with a silken rope:
United States
The two largest mass executions in the U.S., of 38 and 13 men at
the same time, were carried out by hanging.
At present, capital punishment varies from state to state; it is
outlawed in some states but used in most others. However, the death
penalty under federal law is applicable in every state. Other forms
of capital punishment have largely been replaced by
lethal injection in the U.S., where the
condemned may choose this as an option.
Only lethal injection
is used at the federal level and only the states of Washington
and New
Hampshire
still
retain hanging as an option. Hanging was the preferred method of
execution in the state of Iowa
until 1965,
when Iowa abolished the death penalty. The last inmate to be
executed by hanging in the state of Iowa was condemned murderer
Victor Feguer, on
March 15,
1963. Currently, Iowa
has no death penalty, all suspects convicted of capital murder are
automatically sentenced to life without parole.
Laws in
Delaware
were changed in 1986 to specify lethal injection,
except for those convicted prior to 1986, who were allowed to
choose hanging. If a choice was not made, or the convict
refused to choose injection, then hanging was the default method.
This was the case in the 1996 execution of
Billy Bailey, the most recent hanging in
American history. Since the hanging of Bailey, no Delaware prisoner
has fit into this category, thus the practice has ended there
de facto, and the gallows have
been dismantled.
In New Hampshire, if it is found to be 'impractical' to carry out
the execution by lethal injection, then the condemned will be
hanged, and in Washington the condemned still has an outright
choice between hanging and lethal injection.
In
California, Clinton Duffy, who served
as warden of San Quentin State Prison
between 1940 and 1952, presided over ninety
executions. He began to oppose the death penalty and after
his retirement he wrote a memoir entitled
Eighty-Eight Men and
Two Women in support of the movement to abolish the death
penalty. The book documents several hangings gone wrong and
describes how they led his predecessor, Warden James B. Holohan, to
persuade the California Legislature to replace hanging with the gas
chamber in 1937.
Grammar
Some speakers of
English insist
that the past tense and past participle of "hang" in this sense
must be "hanged" and not "hung".Some dictionaries do list only
"hanged", but others show both forms.
References
- OED Entry (requires subscription).
- Report by Kingsbury Smith, International News Service, 16th
October 1946
- Executioner Pierrepoint(ISBN 0-340-21307-8), p. 143–147.
- The history of judicial hanging in Britain 1735 -
1964
- "Gruesome death in gas chamber pushes Arizona
towards injections", New York Times, April 25, 1992 (retrieved 7
January 2008).
- Suicide Statistics. URL accessed on 2006-05-16.
- Trends in suicide by method in England and Wales,
1979 to 2001 (PDF),
Office of National Statistics. URL accessed on
2006-05-16.
- Countries that have abandoned the use of the death
penalty, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, November
8, 2005
- Death penalty in Australia, New South Wales
Council for Civil Liberties
- Capital Punishment Worldwide, MSN Encarta.
Archived 2009-10-31.
- Susan Munroe, History of Capital Punishment in Canada, About:
Canada Online,
- Richard Solash, Hungary: U.S. President To Honor 1956 Uprising
(June 20, 2006), radio Free Europe; RadioLiberty.
- Sakhrani, Monica; Adenwalla, Maharukh; Economic
& Political Weekly, "Death Penalty - Case for Its
Abolition"
- Kumara, Sarath; World Socialist Web Site; "West Bengal
carries out first hanging in India in a decade"
- Iran executes 29 in jail hangings.
- IRAN: Halted execution highlights inherent cruelty
of death penalty. Amnesty International USA
(2008-12-09). Retrieved on 2008-12-11.
- Clark, Richard; The process of Judicial
Hanging.
- AP: Saddam’s half brother and ex-official
hanged January 15, 2007.
- Top Saddam aide sentenced to hang February 12,
2007.
- Saddam's former deputy hanged in Iraq March 20,
2007.
- Iraq's "Chemical Ali" sentenced to death,
MSNBC.com, June 24, 2007. Retrieved on June 24, 2007.
- Second death sentence for Iraq's 'Chemical Ali,
MSNBC.com, December 2, 2008. Retrieved on December 2,
2008.
- Lords Hansard text for 12 February 1998, Hansard,
Col. 1350.
- Writ of Execution - Laurence, Earl
Ferrers.
- The Newgate Calendar - Laurence, Earl Ferrers.
- Freedom of the City - History, City of
London.
- Online
- Online
See also
External links
. However, it has been claimed that the
execution of Earl
Ferrers in 1760 – the only time a peer was hanged after trial
by the House of
Lords
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Misc
Search
