Has anyone ever survived the death penalty? I don’t mean like getting off through appeals or whatnot but actually having the lethal punishment administered and surviving. I seem to recall someone who was sentanced to death by hanging but actually lived and was then set free.
not sure about the west but in Islamic law i do know when being sentenced to death by stoning the man is buried up to his neck , and women up to thier arm pits , if during the stoning the condemned person can pull themselves free then they are free to go
Surviving death by hanging is not too uncommon, if you go by the Newgate Calendar (now available somewhere on line). Captian Kidd was hanged and then hanged again directly --English law of the time didn’t forbid this.
However, a woman in Scotland was hanged for doing away with a newborn illegitimate baby, and revived when the funeral procession stopped for a drink at a public house. Because the Scottish interpretation of the law of the time said that to hang her again would be the equivalent of double jeapordy, she was set free and lived quite some years afterwards.
Surviving death by hanging is not too uncommon, if you go by the Newgate Calendar (now available somewhere on line). Captian Kidd was hanged and then hanged again directly when the rope broke–English law of the time didn’t forbid this, the concept being that the sentence must be completely carried out.
However, a woman in Scotland was hanged for doing away with a newborn illegitimate baby, and revived when the funeral procession stopped for a drink at a public house. Because the Scottish interpretation of the law of the time said that to hang her again would be the equivalent of double jeapordy, she was set free and lived quite some years afterwards.
All such cases revolve around the hanging technology of the time, which was basically choking by suspension from the neck. More modern hangings break the neck (or try to). Death in such cases is quite instant.
no not really , hanging is instant IF you are lucky , there have been recored cases somewhere that your heart can stay beating for up to 20 minutes after the breakage , and though
your neck is broken the nerves are still connected above the neck and you can feel the pain from :
#1 the break
#2 the rope slowly strangling you
you could also be luckyer than the poor sods who stay concious for 20 or so minutes as in feel the break but the
weight of your body compress the arteries in your neck causing a blackout within 8-20 seconds , not exactly instant
but those seconds would feel an awful long time , better not commit treason then (its the only UK crime that you can be Hanged for these days)
There is an occasionally cited case of an Australian POW surviving a Japanese execution involving beheading with a Samuri sword during WWII. As quoted in Codename Downfall by Thomas Allen and Norman Polmar (Headline, 1995):
“I was told to sit down with my knees, legs and feet projecting into the grave. My hands were tied behind my back. A small towel was tied over my eyes … My shirt was unbuttoned and pulled back over my back, exposing the lower part of my neck. My head was bent forward, and after a few seconds I felt a heavy, dull blow sensation on the back of my neck.”
With admirable presence of mind, he pretended to be dead and was duly buried. “He was able to claw his way out, was recaptured and allowed to live, apparently as a curiosity.” Allen and Polmar cite Arnold C. Brackman The Other Nuremberg as their source. One might regard this as a borderline case, since there are similar examples where people have survived by pretending to be dead during mass killings. This however appears to have been intended as an individual execution.
And to follow-up on JCHeckler’s reference to Newgate, Ackroyd’s London, The Biography (Chatto & Windus, 2000) quotes one John Haynes’ memories of his hanging as:
“The last thing I recollect was going up Holborn Hill in a cart. I thought than that I was in a beautiful green field; and that is all I remember till I found myself in your honour’s dissecting room.”
DO you have a source for that? I read that men were not buried at all, and if they could simply escape the stoning they were free to go, while women are buried chest deep (allegedly for decency) and then are stoned.
I can’t see an Islamic man being buried deeper than a woman…
Am I wrong or right here?
The U.K. does not have the death penalty at all - it’s completely abolitionist, according to this site:
And see section 36 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 for the provisions abolishing the death penalty for treason in the U.K.
[And by the way, we’ve had this discussion before, geepee, in this thread. Since we strive to reduce ignorance on these boards, perhaps you could take the time to read replies to your comments, rather than repeating incorrect statements? Frankly, your repeated erroneous statements about the death penalty in the U.K. leads me to doubt anything you say on the topic, including your speculations about Islamic execution practices in this thread.]
The poor bastard is forced to spend the rest of his life doing nothing but reading Army regulations? That’s inhuman.
[Monty Python voice]
Roight, then, it’s off to the law library with yer - read those Army regs! And just consider yerself lucky I didn’t give yer a concurrent sentence of Navy regs!!
[/Monty Python voice]
I don’t trust that site. It’s not an official government publication and it doesn’t list all its sources.
My copy of the Criminal Code of Canada (from 1994) indicates that treason (including assaults on the reigning monarch) are punishable by death. This is not mentioned on the site, which calls Canada abolitionist. Now, it could be that the courts have ruled the punishment for the treason laws to be unconstitutional and thus unenforceable, or the death penalty could have been repealed since 1994, but one would think that the creators of the site would have had the presence of mind to make note of this.
I find it extremely suspect that Canada would have the death penalty for assaulting the Queen, while the UK would not. If anything, one would think it the other way around.
Although the dealth penalty was abolished in the 70’s in the UK ('65 in Great Britain, extended to include Northern Ireland in '73), it remained on the books for three crimes: treason, piracy, and burning down one of HM’s dockyards. However, the death penalty as a punishment was abolished by Parliament in 1998 (“except in war or immediate threat of war”).
This get out was removed in `99 when the goverment signed up to the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans capital punishment.
I am sure there would be ways round it though, if anyone tried to usurp the Queen - REMEMBER THIS, MR. BLAIR!
And by the way, we’ve had this discussion before, geepee, in this thread. Since we strive to reduce ignorance on these boards, perhaps you could take the time to read replies to your comments, rather than repeating incorrect statements? Frankly, your repeated erroneous statements about the death penalty in the U.K. leads me to doubt anything you say on the topic, including your speculations about Islamic execution practices in this thread
http://www.netlondon.com/news/1999-4/7624B7E3E8E445D3802.html
British death penalty for treason was removed in 1999 , since i didn’t hear about it I thought it was still inforce
and 1999 wasn’t that long ago , I went to school in the late 80s and remember in history the lecturer teaching us and said hanging is for treason these days , i just missed the repeal of it
http://www.iran-e-azad.org/stoning/women.html
http://www.geocities.com/stoning2001/english/sohaila.htm
for the stoning issue , since Islam is a radation type of evolution (ie separate arms and branches of it breaking off then it could be true in some places and not in others) as there are different sects of christianity and other movements .
This Englishman is famous as “the man they couldn’t hang”. And he gave Traffic the title of an album. Which is nice.
I’m puzzled by your reference to the Criminal Code, psychonaut. It sounds like the copy you have is out-of-date.
Here’s the provision of the Criminal Code setting out the punishment for treason, from the Federal Justice Department website:
The legislative history is given by the citation that I’ve bolded: this provision was enacted as section 47, chapter C-34, of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1970, and then was amended by an Act passed in the Parliamentary session running from 1974-75-76. That statute, c. 105, was the statute abolishing the death penalty for most offences. The treason provision hasn’t been amended since that time, simply carried forward into the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985. So, I don’t understand how a copy of the Criminal Codepublished in 1994 would show the death penalty for treason - it would be out-of-date by 18 years.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the penalty for treasonous acts committed by members of the Armed Forces? Those are covered by the National Defence Act, ss. 73-76. Those offences did carry a death penalty until 1998, when Parliament substituted life imprisonment. See: An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, S.C. 1998, c. 35, s. 24.
And maybe a few years in a comfy chair for good measure. :D:D
I’m surprised no one has mentioned anything like it, but i remember hearing a story of a man sentenced to death in the electric chair,i think it was. I believe they somehow screwed up,and the guy got shocked,but not killed. Afterwards they let him live,though still in prison. Maybe this was fictional, I can’t remember. Has anyoen else heard this?
hmm since you meantion federal and we are talking UK we’re on the same thing but reading from different books
You may be right about Canada, but Northern Piper is pretty absolutely right about the UK. The death penalty was finally abolished for all offences by the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. Previously, Convention rights could only be enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and appealing to that court was a lengthy and costly process.
Here is a link to the full text of the Act, on the website of The Stationery Office (the UK Government’s official publisher). See Part III of Schedule 1 to the Act, which contains the death penalty provision from the Sixth Protocol to the Convention.
Canada is not a singnatory of the European Convention on Human Rights
The electric chair is not a particularly reliable method of execution, and many convicts have been zapped multiple times before dying. In some cases, they’ve given them medical treatments for the botched attempt before having another go at electrocuting them. There may be an isolated case like you mentioned, but the general consensus seems to be that once the State has been given a go ahead to execute you, they may try again if it doesn’t work the first time.
From some AFU archive stuff by Ted Frank at http://www.urbanlegends.com/death/electric.chair/electric_chair_history.html :