Cruel and Unusual Punishment

[Earl]

According to Amnesty International over 1500 people were judicially executed in 2006, and almost 4000 were sentenced to death worldwide. Figures on judicial corporal punishment are harder to pin down, as many cases are simply referred to as "torture" and the lines blur a little.

The highest scores for capital punishment were given to Sudan, Pakistan, Iran, China, Iraq and the USA. Interestingly Kuwait has the highest number of executions in relation to their population.

China is clearly the "daddy" in the realms of judicial execution, dispatching their criminals at a fantastic rate, yet disappointingly corporal punishment is outlawed in the Republic of China.

There is a long list of crimes in China which carry the death penalty, some as serious as re-selling VAT reciepts, publishing porn or killing a panda. Not surprisingly China carry out more than 50% 0f the entire judicial executions in the world. Firing squad is the preferred method of execution, which is carried out very soon after sentencing. The prisoners are forced to kneel with their hands tied and receive a single bullet to the back of the head. The prisoners family are billed for the bullet.

China has begun trailing lethal injection as the form of execution and have "execution buses" which tour the country to deliver on-the-spot executions.

The prisoners corpses are usually harvested for transplant organs.

Despite China being the record holders for the highest volume of judicial killings, it's the Islamic world which is the most interesting when it comes to corporal and capital punishment.

Islamic Law doles out swift and barbaric justice for a wide variety of offences. Murder, treason / apostacy, terrorism, land, sea, or air piracy, rape, adultery and homosexual behavior all carry the death penalty. Stealing can result in amputation of hands and feet, and canings or whippings seem to be given out on a whim. The term "apostacy" relates to people leaving Islam and joining another faith. That can get you hanged, shot, beheaded or even stoned to death.

Hanging has been popular for years, throughout the world and throughout history. Hanging is a queer one though, the method used in the UK up until it's abolition in the 1960s involved a trapdoor and a drop. The drop could be calculated so the correct amount of force was applied to break the condemned criminal's neck and be a relatively quick and painless death. Of course, the drop could be calculated wrong leading to humourous decapitations. The common method of hanging in modern Islamic countries involves tying a noose around the prisoner's neck, then raising them up on a crane leaving them to die slowly of strangulation often pissing and shitting all over the show as they jerk about gasping for air. Why then do fish not piss and shit on you when you yank them out of a river?

Another easy option is the old firing squad again. Some countries go to some great lengths to try and be as efficient as possible when shooting their condemned. But shooting can be a pretty random method of execution at the best of times. In some Middle Eastern and Asian countries the condemned is paraded out in front of an audience, ordered to lie on the floor then a soldier or policeman just uses any old AK-47 knocking around to fire a few bullets into the prisoner. This continues, sometimes for a couple of minutes, until the executioner is confident the prisoner has eventually "jossed it". I've seen a video of some Arab being executed with an assault rifle. Even after they shot him in the face he carried on squirming and trying to speak. It wasn't exactly "instant" lets put it that way.

Now we get on to the really good stuff. The slightly more bizarre punishments. Corporal punishment, the beating, flogging or even mutilating of a criminal to punish them, is still widely used throughout the world despite being prohibited by the U.N. Most corporal punishment is aimed at the criminals buttocks. They would be strapped into a frame, stark bollock naked, and brutally whipped or beaten. The wounds are really quite superficial, but fucking painful by the looks of things and will leave permanent scarring. Other forms of corporal punishment used in Islamic law include the amputation of the hands and feet of criminals, very medieval. In a modern world I kind of expected this kind of punishment to be carried out under sedation, with the fact you've lost your hand being punishment enough. On the contrary, the wank spanners are seemingly just hacked off with a knife while fully conscious and usually in front of a baying crowd.

Beheading has been in the media more often in recent years, with Islamic terrorists decapitating western prisoners on videos distributed on the internet. The traditional view of beheading with a huge axe, sword or even guillotine is not used in these non-judicial beheadings. Instead the victims are decapitated rather slowly as their necks are hacked at with a rather tiny and seemingly blunt knife. Beheading seems a rather messy form of execution at the best of times, but using a pen-knife seems a little over-sadistic in my humble opinion.

Fotunately I was relieved to learn that judicial beheading is much more pleasant. The condemned man or woman is given tranquilizers, to pacify them a little, blindfolded and led into a public square or better still carpark. They are told to kneel in the middle of a large plastic sheet and the executioner takes out his scimitar. The executioner will take a few practice swings through the air, like a golfer, then jabs the prisoner with the tip of the sword in the back. The prisoner raises their head involuntarily when jabbed with the sword and the executioner takes this opportunity to make the fatal swing, lopping the prisoners head off with one blow. Or not. Sometimes, on a bad day, the procedure can take two or three blows. Once the body is sans head, a doctor stops the heavy blood flow and sews the head back on!!! The corpse is then simply rolled up in the plastic sheet and buried in an unmarked grave. A good and experienced executioner can remove the old brainball with one stroke, and can send it a good three feet through the air, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Last on the list is stoning. Stoning is usually reserved for the crime of adultery and is applied to both sexes, equally? Well not exactly equally. The Islamic Law states that if the person being stoned manages to escape they are permitted to go free. Sounds good, but the method for stoning laid down by Islamic Law states that men to be stoned are buried in the ground up to their waist, women on the other hand are buried up to their necks!
Escape from that you slag!

Once buried up to their necks, the surrounding crowd of the condemned's peers are directed which stones they are allowed to use to pelt the criminal with until their heads are eventually bashed in completely. No stones large enough to kill with one or two blows are permitted, that would end the afternoon's entertainment too soon.

Another controversy which surrounds stoning, is that married women who are raped are often stoned to death for adultery!!! That'll teach 'em not to wear their burka and to venture outdoors!!!

The U.S. is often criticised for their human rights violations by continuing with their programme of capital punishment. However the U.S. will defend their use of execution with it's humane methods.

The Gas Chamber. The gas used is hydrogen cyanide, which kills the prisoner by cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain. After the first inhalation of the gas the prisoner will feel the effects of asphyxiation. They are unable to breath and will writhe and squirm in agony. Unconsciousness can take several minutes while the prisoner turns purple and begins drooling. Some cases recorded tell of prisoners bashing their own heads in against the back of the chairs they are strapped into.

Old Sparky. The electric chair is infamous as the method of execution in the U.S. When the condemned is strapped into the last piece of furniture they will sit on and the 2,400 volts are applied they can burst into flames, shit and piss themselves, their eyes pop out onto their cheeks, and sometimes vomit blood and drool. Up to five "jolts" can be required to dispatch the criminal, and can become quite long and drawn out. Death by electrocution is often caused by stopping the heart functioning, so would have the same physical sensation as a prolonged heart attack, but in many cases on Old Sparky the current is used to literally cook the condemned from the inside out. The blood will boil.

Lethal injection. At last a method of execution which is quick, painless and totally humane? Well, it's not quick and the inexperienced executioners often bungle the inserting of needles rupturing viens and what not causing pain and distress. Many witnesses report the prisoners gasping and writhing in agony, remaining conscious until death. But at the end of the day, it has to be better than getting rocks thrown at your head for a half-hour.

[Ck]

The prisoners corpses are usually harvested for transplant organs.

That's a good idea!

[timey]

[TheMob]

Some of those would make a great Saturday afternoons entertainment.

They could have a half time stoning at the football.

[Fenella]

There's a chap who's just been executed in the US, and he actually chose the electric chair rather than lethal injection.

[Ck]

Maybe he was scared of needles

[Earl]

There's a chap who's just been executed in the US, and he actually chose the electric chair rather than lethal injection.

You still have the right to choose the gas chamber too. If they don't explain to them the exact process, some of the death row prisoners might mistakenly believe that the electric chair is swift and painless.

[SFB]

There's no reason to worry about feeling the pain of death, the bonus is that there's no long drawn out, painful recovery process to suffer.

[Fenella]

You still have the right to choose the gas chamber too. If they don't explain to them the exact process, some of the death row prisoners might mistakenly believe that the electric chair is swift and painless.

That's true. I can't imagine anyone would prefer it to lethal injection though. It didn't say why he chose the electric chair but I thought it might be because of shame or maybe he thought he should suffer. He killed his children while he was in a state, so maybe he thought he shouldn't have the easier option.

[Fenella]

There's no reason to worry about feeling the pain of death, the bonus is that there's no long drawn out, painful recovery process to suffer.

I think the worst part of any execution must be the lead up to it. It's not like they suddenly kill you without warning. There's the rituals like being given a date and time, the last breakfast, then the walk to the execution place. The worst bit must be those last few seconds when you're just waiting for it to happen. It probably seems like an eternity!

When they used to hang people at Tyburn the criminal had to ride through the streets for miles being jeered at. Can you imagine how awful that must have been?