A Closer Look at Executions
Serial killer, rapist, and necrophiliac Ted Bundy admitted to killing 36 young women and girls and keeping a dozen of their severed heads as souvenirs in his apartment. Mass murderer John Wayne Gacy raped and tortured 33 young men he lured to his home before strangling them. He buried 29 of them under his house. Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who shot and killed seven men. Her story was turned into the movie Monster, starring Charlize Theron. Domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bomb killed 168 people. Gacy, Bundy, Wuornos, and McVeigh were all executed by lethal injection, the most popular method in the United States.
Execution is putting a criminal to death as punishment for violating a law
The 33 U.S. states where the death penalty is in force use these methods of execution:
- Lethal injection is authorized in every state and by the U.S. Government and the U.S. Military, too. It accounts for far more executions than all the other methods combined.
- Electrocution. Authorized by eight mostly Southern states, it’s the default method in South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union. Most of us say electric chair, or as people in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia say, Old Sparky. The electric chairs in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee are called Old Smokey, which I thought was all covered with snow.
- Lethal gas. Most people say gas chamber. Eight states authorize this procedure, all of which have lethal injection as the default method. Alabama began using nitrogen on January 25, 2024 when it executed a murder-for-hire killer.
- Firing squad. Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah are the only states that still use firing squads but so infrequently that they combined for only three executions in the last 50 years.
- Hanging. New Hampshire allows hanging for crimes committed prior to 2019. Hanging was very popular since 1623, big at the Salem Witch Trials, and common across the Wild West. Crowds would gather together in town squares to observe the hanging first hand. Hanging was a public ritual and thought by the citizenry to deter criminal behavior and teach morality lessons to the children. Hanging was not considered to be cruel and unusual punishment until nearly 200 years later. In Owensboro, Kentucky in 1936, a crowd of 20,000 people viewed the last public hanging in the United States.
Most of us know of a few other ways people have been executed
- Poison has been used as an execution method since the Ancient Greeks gave that cup of hemlock to Socrates. Today every poison can be detected and traced.
- Joan of Arc was tried and convicted of witchcraft. She was burned at the stake.
- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of selling U.S. atom bomb secrets to the USSR and executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison, in Ossining, NY.
- Saddam Hussein, the “Butcher of Baghdad,” was tried by the Iraqi government for executing 150 of its citizens. He was hanged.
Legal methods of execution in modern times are meant to kill quickly and reduce suffering
Back in history, torture was an important part of most executions, legal and otherwise. More than just killing someone outright, torture was especially pleasurable for those drawn to sanctioned opportunities to be cruel. The primary goal of torture is to make victims suffer excruciating pain — especially for a long time — before “putting them out of their misery.”
Stoning is the simplest of methods
Community members are invited to pick up rocks and hurl them at offenders repeatedly until they’re dead. Stoning is mentioned in the Old Testament and the Torah but not the Quran. Stoning is meant to be a slow, painful death, and is still practiced today in more than a dozen Muslim countries as a form of community justice against accused murderers, prostitutes, adulterers, and blasphemers. The best stones are large enough to inflict severe damage, but small enough that the victim is not killed immediately.
Drowning
This was done by holding the victim’s head under water, like the ducking stool gone bad. In The Big Lebowski, thugs shoved The Dude’s head underwater in his toilet, but didn’t kill him. Another cinematic method is going out on a boat, attaching weighted items to the victim’s feet, and tossing him over the side. Heavy items such as chains, cinder blocks, and boat anchors not only drowned the victim, but disposed of the body, too. The ocean-dumping was used on the Sopranos to get rid of Big Pussy Bonpensiero after he turned snitch for the Feds. Tony, Silvio, and Paulie shot him first, so technically, he did not drown.
Immersing victims up to their necks in tubs of boiling water
This sounds like cartoon cannibals, but it’s the method Emperor Nero used to kill thousands of Christians. While searching for something more agonizing than water, executioners learned boiling oil, wax, and tar were far more painful. The pièce de résistance was achieved when molten lead (more than 600 °F / 300 °C) was poured onto victims’ heads and down their throats.
Burning at the stake
Victims were tied in place and executioners set fire to the woodpile they were standing in the middle of. This was a popular way of dispensing with witches and heretics. The Spanish Inquisition is the all-time record-holder, burning more than 30,000 accused heretics at the stake.
Being thrown to the lions
This method was popular with Romans back in the days of gladiators and chariot races. Another creative way to torture victims was throwing them into the water to be torn apart by sharks and alligators.
Crucifixion
In Ancient Rome, people who were given the death penalty were stripped naked, beaten, and whipped. Backs bleeding, they were pinned to large wooden beams by nails driven deep into the wood, right through their hands and feet. The cross made by the two beams would be raised upright so victims hung from the nails until dead It is said the Roman Empire abolished crucifixion in 337.
Drawing and quartering
Not for nickel-and-dime crimes, this special execution was reserved for traitors in the 1200s. Four executioners each took an arm or leg and tied it to a different horse. Then they whipped and spurred those four horses in four different directions, tearing the body into quarters. England outlawed it in 1832.
Impaling is running a sharpened spear through a victim so it sticks out both sides
Can you recall the scene from Lonesome Dove where Deets was impaled by an Indian spear while rescuing a blind infant? That’s impaling. Another way would be to force the victim down onto a spike like one of those While You Were Out note holders.
During the French Revolution, the guillotine was used to execute thousands
The most notable heads to be totally separated from their bodies and end up in a basket were Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, the neoclassic furniture maker. Everyone knows it was Marie who said “Let them eat cake,” but as is the case with so many “everybody knows,” no, she didn’t.
William the Conqueror is said to have introduced England to beheading by sword
It was quickly deemed a noble way to die. Traitors were beheaded with common axes. Today Saudi Arabia keeps the beheading tradition alive by using swords to behead those to be executed for the crimes of homosexuality, adultery, fornication, blasphemy, and sorcery.
Immurement means to enclose or confine someone against their will
Victims would be locked away, boxed up behind brick walls, imprisoned to die slowly from starvation and dehydration. Premature burials were reserved for priestesses who lost their virginity. To ensure they died a bloodless death, they were buried alive and left to suffocate.
Flaying
Victims were stripped naked and tied by their hands and feet. Executioners used sharp knives and took days to slowly peel away the victim’s skin while keeping the pieces as intact as possible.
Floaters
Persians locked victims into wooden tubs with their arms and legs under the surface of stagnant pond water. They were force-fed milk and honey until painfully bloated, causing diarrhoea that attracted parasites that ate and bred in the victim’s gangrenous flesh. Victims were fed each day to prolong their torture.
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The author is a researcher, writer, and teacher who looks at old things in new ways, sees the commonplace in greater detail, and explains complex subject matter in simple, conversational language. More than 400 of his free articles are posted on this site.
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