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Sentencing Law and Policy
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Since lethal injection isn’t working out…

By Douglas Berman

how about hanging?  Thanks to ODPI, I see that Dean Reynolds has this lengthy article on hanging over at the ABC News website.  The long piece is entitled “Sentenced to Hang: Executions by Hanging Still Happen in the U.S. — But is it ‘Humane’?” and it almost reads like a how-to guide.  Here’s one abridged portion of the article:

[H]anging is the oldest and still most widely used method of execution in the world today, according to a British study on executions.  The research goes on to say that at the very least, 315 men and 4 women were hanged in 10 countries during 2006, many in public.

There has not been a hanging execution in the United States since 1996, and only three overall since 1976 when the Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty.

From trees, to gallows, to stages with trap-doors, hanging continues to be an attempt at a highly visible deterrent…. Again, referring to the British study, there are four main forms of hanging:

  1. Short or no-drop hanging, in which the condemned drops just a few inches and in struggling against the noose, strangles himself….
  2. Suspension hanging, in which the condemned is slowly raised by the neck and asphyxiated….
  3. Standard drop-hanging, in which the prisoner drops a distance of four to six feet. It may or may not break the neck, so asphyxiation is also a possibility with this method….
  4. Measured or long-drop hanging, in which the person’s height, weight and physique are calculated to ensure a quickly broken neck and subsequent death.