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", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain "hanging".
Hanging oneself describes 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.[1]
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There are four ways of performing a judicial hanging – suspension hanging, the short drop, the standard drop, and the long drop. A mechanised form of hanging, the upright jerker, was also experimented with in the 18th century, with a variant of it used today in Iran.
Suspension, like the short drop, causes death by using the weight of the body to tighten the trachea with the noose. Prisoners are often reported to have little or no struggle before they go limp, because their jugular vein and carotid arteries are blocked and blood flow to the brain is reduced.[2] For example, John Smith described his pain vanishing after seeing a great blaze of glaring light.[3] The Royal Navy formerly hanged mutineers by hoisting them up from the deck of the ship by their necks, using a rope passing over a yardarm.[4]
The short drop is performed 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, which typically takes 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 (hence the colloquial slang for hanging "to be turned off"), leaving the condemned hanging. Another method involves using a stool, which the condemned is required to stand on, being kicked away.
Yet another short drop variant is the Austro-Hungarian "pole" method, in which the condemned is hoisted to the top of a pole approximately 10 feet (3.0 m) in height via a sling under the armpits, a narrow diameter noose affixed to a hook and the prisoner's neck and the prisoner is rapidly jerked downward by the assistant executioners via a rope attached to the condemned's feet and routed through a pulley in the body of the pole and out the back. The executioner stands on a stepped platform approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) high beside the condemned and guides the head downward with his hand simultaneous to the efforts of his assistants. Unconsciousness is nearly instant, with death occurring via strangulation. Nazi war criminal Karl Hermann Frank was executed in this manner in 1946 in Prague.
The standard drop, which arrived as calculated in English units, involves a drop of between 4 and 6 feet (1.2 and 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.[5] In the execution of Ribbentrop, historian Giles MacDonogh records that: "The hangman botched the execution and the rope throttled the former foreign minister for twenty minutes before he expired."[6]
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 and weight[7] 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. The careful placement of the eye or knot of the noose (so that the head was jerked back as the rope tightened) contributed to breaking the neck predictably.
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 newtons 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 infamous 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.[8] 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.[9]
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.[10]
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 very simple yet highly effective suicide method. Full suspension is not required, and for this reason hanging is especially commonplace among suicidal prisoners (see suicide watch). A type of hanging comparable to full suspension hanging may be obtained by self-strangulation using a ligature around the neck and the partial weight of the body (partial suspension) to tighten the ligature. When a suicidal hanging involves partial suspension, the victim is found to have both feet touching the ground e.g. they are kneeling, crouching or standing.
In Canada, hanging is the most common method of suicide,[11] and in the U.S., hanging is the second most common method, after firearms.[12] 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).[13]
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, the major cause of death is severe trauma to the upper cervical spine. However, the injuries produced are highly variable. One study showed that only a small minority of a series of judicial hangings produced fractures to the cervical spine (6 out of 34 cases studied), with half of these fractures (3 out of 34) being the classic "hangman's fracture" (bilateral fractures of the pars interarticularis of the C2 vertebra).[14] The location of the knot of the hanging rope is a major factor in determining the mechanics of cervical spine injury, with a submental knot (hangman's knot under the chin) being the only location capable of producing the sudden, straightforward hyperextension injury that causes the classic "hangman's fracture".
There is evidence suggesting that there might be superior alternatives if there were sufficient interest to support research into such matters. Consider in particular an event recounted in the biography of Albert Pierrepoint.[10] Events followed a most unconventional sequence during the hanging of a particularly powerful and uncooperative German spy during World War II. Pierrepoint relates: "Just as I was crossing to the lever, he jumped with bound feet. The drop opened, and he plunged down, and I saw with horror that the noose was slipping. It would have come right over his head had it not caught roughly at a point halfway up the hood – it had in fact been stopped on his upper lip by the projection of his nose – and the body jerked down, then became absolutely still apart from the swinging of the rope. I went down into the pit with the prison medical officer. He examined the body and said to me: "A clean death. Instantaneous." He sounded surprised, and I did not blame him. I was surprised myself, and very relieved. On my next visit to Wandsworth the governor told me that the severance of the spinal cord had been perfect."
Not surprisingly in retrospect, it appears that such unconventional application of forces might be particularly efficient. There is at least some evidence that some of the countries with particularly active programs of judicial execution may have given the question of the design of efficient and reliable nooses practical attention. For example, photographs of nooses in a South African execution chamber opened to the public after abolishment of the death penalty, showed double nooses.[15] Presumably the upper noose held the lower one in place to ensure a perfect hangman's fracture. The possibly more elegant, but probably more tricky English technique with a single running noose and a rope so arranged as to whip around into the ideal position, might well have been too error-prone to be satisfactorily reliable in any but highly skilled hands. If so, the likes of the double noose might have much merit.
The side, or subaural knot, has been shown to produce other, more complex injuries, with one thoroughly studied case producing only ligamentous injuries to the cervical spine and bilateral vertebral artery disruptions, but no major vertebral fractures or crush injuries to the spinal cord.[16] Death from a "hangman's fracture" occurs mainly when the applied force is severe enough to also cause a severe subluxation of the C2 and C3 vertebra that crushes the spinal cord and/or disrupts the vertebral arteries. Hangman's fractures from other hyperextension injuries (the most common being unrestrained motor vehicle accidents and falls or diving injuries where the face or chin suddenly strike an immovable object) are frequently survivable if the applied force does not cause a severe subluxation of C2 on C3.
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.[17]
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.
Hanging has been a method of capital punishment in many countries.
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.[18] The last man executed by hanging (or any other means) in Australia was Ronald Ryan on 3 February 1967, in Victoria.[19]
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.[20]
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.[20]
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.[21]
The last hangings in Canada took place on December 11, 1962.[20]
In 1955, Egypt hanged three Israelis charged with spying.[22] In 2004, Egypt hanged five militants on charges of trying to kill the Prime Minister.[23]
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 commonly sentenced were partisans 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" (Basic Law) 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 in 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.[18]
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.[24]
Capital punishment was abolished for all crimes in 1990.[18]
All executions in India are carried out by hanging.
Nathuram Godse, Mohandas Gandhi’s (known as Mahatma Gandhi) 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".[25]
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.[26]
Death by hanging is the primary means of capital punishment in Iran. It is legal for murder, rape, and drug trafficking unless the criminal pays diyya to the family, thus attaining their forgiveness (see Sharia law). If the presiding judge deems the case to be "causing public outrage", he can order the hanging to take place in public at the spot where the crime was committed, typically from a mobile telescoping crane which hoists the condemned high into the air.[27] On July 19, 2005, two boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, aged 15 and 17 respectively, who had been convicted of the rape of a 13-year-old boy, were hanged at Edalat (Justice) Square in Mashhad, on charges of homosexuality and rape.[28][29] On August 15, 2004, a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Sahaaleh (a.k.a. Atefeh Rajabi), was executed for having committed "acts incompatible with chastity".[30]
At dawn on July 27, 2008, the Iranian Government executed 29 people at Evin Prison in Tehran.[31] On December 2, 2008, an unnamed man was hanged for murder at Kazeroun Prison, just moments after he was pardoned by the murder victim's family. He was quickly cut down and rushed to a hospital, where he was successfully revived.[32]
Hanging was used under the regime of Saddam Hussein,[33] but was suspended along with capital punishment on June 10, 2003, when the United States invaded and overthrew the previous regime. The death penalty was reinstated on August 8, 2004.[34]
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 insurgents by hanging.[35]
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity[36] 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.[37] A week later, another video surfaced on the Internet, which showed Saddam's body with a large neck wound, creating speculation that the execution had been carried out incorrectly.[38]
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.[39]
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.[40] 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.[41]
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.[42] Al-Majid was sentenced to death three more times: once for the 1991 suppression of a Shi'a uprising along with Abdul-Ghani Abdul Ghafur on December 2, 2008;[43] once for the 1999 crackdown in the assassination of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr on March 2, 2009;[44] and once on January 17, 2010 for the gassing of the Kurds in 1988;[45] he was hanged over a week later on January 25.[46]
On October 26, 2010, Saddam's top minister Tariq Aziz was sentenced to hang for persecuting the members of rival Shi'a political parties.[47]
On July 14, 2011, Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tay and two of Saddam's half-brothers – Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Watban Ibrahim al-Tikriti (both condemned to death on March 11, 2009 for the role in the executions of 42 traders who were accused of manipulating food prices[48] – were handed over to the Iraqi authorities for execution.[49]
It is alleged that Iraq's government keeps the execution rate secret, and hundreds may be carried out every year. In 2007, Amnesty International stated that 900 people were at "imminent risk" of execution in Iraq.
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.[20]
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,[50] Mamoru Takuma,[51] and Tsutomu Miyazaki.[52]
Death by hanging is the traditional method of capital punishment in Jordan. In 1993, Jordan hanged two Jordanians convicted of spying for Israel.[53]
Lebanon hanged two men in 1998 for murdering a man and his sister.[54]
Hanging is the traditional way of capital punishment in Malaysia.
The last person executed by hanging in Portugal was Francisco Matos Lobos on April 16, 1842. Before, it had been a common death penalty.
In Pakistan hanging is the most common form of execution.
Hanging was commonly practiced in the Russian Empire during the rule of the Romanov Dynasty as an alternative to impalement, which was used in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Hanging was eliminated by Alexander II along with serfdom in 1868, but was restored by the time of his death and his assassins were hanged. While those sentenced to death for murder were usually pardoned and sentences commuted to life imprisonment, those guilty of high treason were usually executed. This included also the Grand Duchy of Finland and Kingdom of Poland under the Russian crown. Taavetti Lukkarinen became the last Finn to be executed this way. He was hanged for espionage and high treason in 1916.
The hanging was usually performed by short drop and in public. The gallows was usually either a stout nearby tree branch, as in case of Lukkarinen, or a makeshift gallows constructed for the purpose.
After the October Revolution in 1917, capital punishment was, on paper, abolished, but continued to be used unabated against people perceived to be enemies of the regime. Under the Bolsheviks, most executions were performed by shooting, either by firing squad or by a single fiream. The last to be hanged were Andrei Vlasov and his companions in 1946.
In Singapore, hanging using the long-drop method is currently used as mandatory punishment for various crimes, such as drug trafficking, kidnapping, and unauthorized possession of firearms.[55]
Syria has publicly hanged people, such as two Jews in 1952, Israeli spy Eli Cohen in 1965, and a number of Jews accused of spying in 1969.[56][57][58]
As a form of judicial execution in England, hanging is thought to date from the Anglo-Saxon period.[59] Records of the names of British hangmen begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s; complete records extend from the 16th century to the last hangmen, Robert Leslie Stewart and Harry Allen, who conducted the last British executions in 1964.
At the beginning of the 19th century, children in Britain were punished in the same way as adults. They were even sentenced to death for petty theft.[60] In 1814 five child criminals under the age of fourteen were hanged at the Old Bailey, the youngest being only eight years old.[61] Until 1868 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 1957, in an attempt to prevent the abolition of capital punishment completely, two levels of murder were defined: First Degree murder and Second Degree with only First Degree murder carrying the death penalty.
In 1965, Parliament passed the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) 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.
In the UK, some felons were traditionally executed by hanging with a silken rope:
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.
The largest mass execution in the United States, of 38 Sioux Indians sentenced to death for engaging in massacres of white settlers, was carried out by hanging in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862.[66] The last public hanging in the United States took place on August 14, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky. Rainey Bethea was executed for the rape and murder of 70-year-old Lischa Edwards. The execution was presided over by the first female sheriff in Kentucky, Florence Thompson.[67][68]
In California, Clinton Duffy, who served as warden of San Quentin State Prison between 1940 and 1952, presided over ninety executions.[69] 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.[70][71]
Various methods of capital punishment have been replaced by lethal injection in most states and the federal government. Many states that offered hanging as an option have since eliminated the method. Condemned murderer Victor Feguer became the last inmate to be executed by hanging in the state of Iowa on March 15, 1963. Hanging was the preferred method of execution for capital murder cases in Iowa until 1965, when the death penalty was abolished and replaced with life imprisonment without parole. Barton Kay Kirkham was the last person to be hanged in Utah, preferring it over execution by firing squad. No subsequent inmate in Utah had been hanged by the time the option was replaced with lethal injection in 1980. Laws in Delaware were changed in 1986 to specify lethal injection, except for those convicted before 1986 (who were still allowed to choose hanging). If a choice was not made, or the convict refused to choose injection, then hanging would become 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 fit into this category, thus the practice ended there de facto, and the state's gallows were dismantled.
Only the states of Washington and New Hampshire presently retain hanging as an option. 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.[72]
The proper, traditional past tense and past participle form of the verb "hang", in this sense, is (to be) "hanged" and not "hung". Some dictionaries list only "hanged",[73][74] whereas others show both forms.[75][76]
