From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electric chair as used for electrocutions. The electric chair was developed in the late 1880s by a dentist with support from Thomas Edison (who had a financial interest in having direct current used in providing electricity, whereas the electric chair uses alternating current) and is still in use today.

Gas chamber (configured for lethal injection)

Crushing by elephant

Methods of execution used to carry out capital punishment have varied over time, and include:

• Asphyxiation (or strangulation), such as by Garrotte
• Blood eagle (possibly a myth)
• Boiling to death
• Burning, especially for religious heretics and witches on the stake
• Brazen bull
• Breaking on the Wheel
• Burial (alive, also known as the pit)
• Colombian necktie
• Crucifixion
• Crushing by a weight, abruptly or as a slow ordeal - see also animals
• Decapitation, or beheading (as by sword, axe or guillotine)
• Disembowelment
• Dismemberment
• Drawing and quartering (Considered by many to be the most cruel of punishments)
• Drowning
• Electrocution
• Explosives
• Flaying (skinning)
• Garrote
• Gassing
• Guillotine
• Hanging
• Impalement
• Lethal injection
• Iron Maiden
• Keelhauling (not always lethal) and walking the plank (if not fictitious)
• People shredder (later discredited)
• Poisoning
• Running the gauntlet
• Sawing
• Scaphism and similar methods mentioned there
• Shooting can be performed either
  • by Firing squad
  • 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
• Starvation and Dehydration (sometimes as immurement)
• Stoning
• By being thrown from a height. Rome executed murders 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. During the Argentinian Dirty War, some victims were even pushed out of planes and into the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to drown (this form of disappearance was termed vuelos de la muerte, "death flights"). However, death flights are far from being forms of capital punishment, since they the victims were not judged, but simply illegally executed. Death flights were also used during the Algerian War (1954-62) by Marcel Bigeard's paratroopers.
• Various animal-related methods
  • Sewing in into a wet yak's hide, when the hide dries it will shrink and the victim be squeezed to death
  • 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 carnivorous fish (such as piranhas or sharks); by crabs or by insects (such as ants)
  • Poisonous stings from scorpions and bites by snakes, spiders, etc.
  • Crushing by elephant or trampling by a herd or by horsemen, as practiced by the Mongolian hordes
  • Snake pit

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Executions

• Internationalist Review Article published in the Internationalist Review on the evolution of execution methods in the United States