List of methods of capital punishment
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[edit] Methods of capital punishment
Methods of execution used to carry out capital punishment have varied over time, and include:
- Burning, especially for religious heretics and witches on the stake
- Boiling to death
- Breaking wheel
- Burial (alive, also known as the pit)
- Crucifixion
- Crushing by a weight, abruptly or as a slow ordeal - see also Various animal-related methods below.
- Decapitation, or beheading (as by sword, axe or guillotine)
- Disembowelment
- Dismemberment
- Drawing and quartering
- Drowning, mostly done by way of the ducking stool and sometimes by walking the plank; cement shoes have allegedly been used by the Mafia
- Electrocution (also electric chair)
- Explosives
- Exposure in animal skin
- Flaying
- Garrote
- Gassing
- Guillotine
- Hanging
- Impalement
- Lethal injection
- Marooning
- Nitrogen asphyxiation (theoretical "humane" method of execution)
- Poisoning
- Pendulum Blade
- Sawing
- Scaphism and other similar methods
- Shooting can be performed either
- by Firing squad (Usually to maintain peace and threaten insurgent forces
- by a single shooter (such as the neck shot, often performed on a kneeling prisoner, as in the PR China)
- (especially collectively) by cannon or machine gun
- Slow slicing
- Stabbing
- Starvation and Dehydration (sometimes as immurement)
- Stoning
- By being thrown from a height. Rome executed murderers and traitors by flinging them from the Tarpeian Rock. Defenestration, the act of throwing someone from a window, has been used more by rebels and angry mobs than by official executions. Death flights, throwing someone off a plane or helicopter, have been used in more recent times.
- Various animal-related methods
- Tearing apart by horses, e.g. Ancient China (using five horses) or "quartering," with four horses, as in The Song of Roland and Child Owlet
- Attack/devouring by animals, such as dogs or wolves, as in Ancient Rome and the Biblical lion's den; by rodents (such as rats); by alligators or crocodiles, or carnivorous fish (such as piranhas or sharks); by crabs or by insects (such as ants)
- Venomous stings from scorpions and bites by snakes, spiders, etc.
- Snake pit
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[edit] External links
- Internationalist Review Article published in the Internationalist Review on the evolution of execution methods in the United States
