List of methods of capital punishment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of methods of capital punishment.
| Method | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Animals |
|
|
| Boiling to death | This penalty was carried out using a large cauldron filled with water, oil, tar, tallow, or even molten lead. | |
| Breaking back | A Mongolian method of execution that avoided the spilling of blood on the ground[2] | |
| Breaking wheel | Also known as the Catherine wheel | |
| Buried alive | ||
| Burning | Supposed to have been popular for executing for religious heretics and witches, | |
| Cooking | Brazen Bull | |
| Crucifixion | Roping or nailing to a wooden cross or similar apparatus (such as a tree) and allowing to perish. | |
| Crushing | By a weight, abruptly or as a slow ordeal. | |
| Decapitation | Also known as beheading. One of the most famous execution methods is execution by guillotine. | |
| Disembowelment | ||
| Dismemberment | Being drawn and quartered sometimes resulted in dismemberment. | |
| Drawing and quartering | ||
| Electrocution | The electric chair | |
| Falling | ||
| Flaying | The skin is removed from the body. | |
| Garrote | ||
| Gas | Death by asphyxiation or poison gas in a sealed chamber | |
| Hanging | ||
| Immurement | Being left to die of starvation or dehydration. | |
| Impalement | ||
| Keelhauling | European maritime punishment. | |
| Lethal injection | ||
| Pendulum[3] | A type of machine with an axe head for a weight that slices closer to the victim's torso over time | |
| Poisoning | Lethal injection is the modern form of poisoning and is used in some countries. | |
| Sawing | ||
| Scaphism | ||
| Shooting |
|
|
| Slow slicing | ||
| Stabbing | ||
| Starvation / Dehydration | Immurement | |
| Stoning | ||
| Strangulation |
[edit] References
- ^ This Won't Hurt a Bit: A Painlessly Short (and Incomplete) Evolution of Execution.
- ^ Chingis Khan
- ^ R.D. Melville (1905), "The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland," The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 2, p. 228; Geoffrey Abbott (2006) Execution: the guillotine, the Pendulum, the Thousand Cuts, the Spanish Donkey, and 66 Other Ways of Putting Someone to Death, MacMillan, ISBN 0312352220, p. 213. Both refer to the use of the pendulum (pendola)by inquisitorial tribunals. Melville, however, refers only to its use as a torture method, while Abbott suggests that the device was purposely allowed to kill the victim if he refused to confess.
