The blindfold is often as much for the benefit of the executioners as it is for the prisoner. When the condemned person is able to look directly at the members of the firing squad, it greatly reduces the executioners' anonymity, creating a more stressful situation for those simply fulfilling their duty.
Executioners often wore masks to hide their identity and avoid any retribution. They were often booed and jeered, especially if the person to be executed was a popular or sympathetic figure.
Lethal injection avoids many of the unpleasant effects of other forms of execution: bodily mutilation and bleeding due to decapitation, smell of burning flesh in electrocution, disturbing sights or sounds in lethal gassing and hanging, the problem of involuntary defecation and urination.
While hanging, their tongue will come out and facial expressions may make others to feel sad for them. To reduce such incidents and to avoid discomfort, they are covered with black cloth.
Some say firing squads are less cruel and painful than lethal injection, and less likely to be botched; others say it's not so cut-and-dry and there are other factors to consider.
The 'waist chop' involved an executioner using a very large, bladed instrument to slice the wretched prisoner into two at the waist, missing the vital organs and so causing a slow, painful death. The 'waist chop' was not formally abolished in China until the 18th century.
After its adoption, the device remained France's standard method of judicial execution until abolition of capital punishment in 1981. The last person to be executed in France was Hamida Djandoubi, guillotined on 10 September 1977.
At Baumetes Prison in Marseille, France, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder, becomes the last person executed by guillotine.
Pole method
A rope is attached around the condemned's feet and routed through a pulley at the base of the pole. The condemned is hoisted to the top of the pole by means of a sling running across the chest and under the armpits.
In practice, China traditionally uses the firing squad as its standard method of execution. However, in recent years, China has adopted lethal injection as its sole method of execution, though execution by firing squad can still be administered.
China is the world's most active death penalty country; according to Amnesty International, China executes more people than the rest of the world combined each year. In December 2015, Mongolia repealed the death penalty for all crimes and in June 2022 Kazakhstan abolished it completely. India executes criminals rarely.
Lingchi ([lǐŋʈʂʰɻ̩̌]; Chinese: 凌遲), translated variously as the slow process, the lingering death, or slow slicing, and also known as death by a thousand cuts, was a form of torture and execution used in China from roughly 900 CE up until the practice ended around the early 1900s. It was also used in Vietnam and Korea.
Jack Ketch, byname of John Ketch, (died November 1686), English executioner notorious for his barbarous inefficiency; for nearly two centuries after his death his nickname was popularly applied to all of England's executioners.
As illustrated in Into the Abyss, a documentary detailing the death sentence of convicted killer Michael Perry, many execution guards experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One guard explained his acute symptoms at the outset of his descent into PTSD.
Elizabeth "Liz" Sugrue Irish: Éilis Uí Shiochrú; ( c. 1740/1750 – 1807), also known as Lady Betty, was an Irish executioner.
Ronald Ryan was the last man hanged in Australia, 50 years ago on 3 February 1967.
"1786: Hannah Ocuish, age 12". Executed Today.
King of France and Navarre
In 1789, faced with a grave financial crisis, the king summoned a meeting of the Estates General at the palace. Later that year, ceding to popular pressure, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette left Versailles for Paris. Both died by the guillotine in 1793.
Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun, renowned first portraitist of French queen Marie Antoinette at the dawn of the French revolution is pushed to exile to escape the guillotine.
Accused of a series of crimes that included conspiring with foreign powers against the security of France, Marie Antoinette was found guilty of high treason and executed on 16 October 1793.
Current status. Today, the death penalty has been abolished in France.
Electrocution Is Like “Being Burned Alive”
Contrary to early assumptions about the electric chair, there is no evidence that electrocution produces an instantaneous or painless death, the court found.
New York is the first to adopt the newest method in capital punishment, death by electric chair. Murderer William Kemmler is the first to be electrocuted; second shock is needed when he returned to consciousness after the initial shock.