Willie Francis (January 12, 1929 – May 9, 1947) was an African American teenager known for surviving a failed execution by electrocution in the United States. He was a convicted juvenile sentenced to death at age 16 by the state of Louisiana in 1945 for the murder of Andrew Thomas, a Cajun pharmacy owner in St.
On May 3, 2023, the family of Joe Nathan James (pictured) sued the state of Alabama for the pain and suffering it caused during his three-hour-long lethal injection in 2022. It is believed to be the longest known execution in U.S. history.
Timothy McVeigh, White male, executed on June 11, 2001.
McVeigh was granted a 30-day stay of execution by Attorney General John Ashcroft after it was discovered that the FBI had failed to disclose more than 3,000 pages of document to McVeigh's defense team.
October 5, 2022: Texas executed John Henry Ramirez. "I am ready, Warden,” were his last words.
Most known executions took place in China (1000s), Iran (at least 576) Saudi Arabia (196), Egypt (24), and the USA (18). In 2022, 93% of known global executions (excluding China) were carried out in the Middle East and North Africa.
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 In December 2015, Mongolia repealed the death penalty for all crimes and in June 2022 Kazakhstan abolished it completely.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.
"It's like a burning cocktail coursing through your veins," says Lubarsky, referring to potassium chloride. "Once it reaches the heart, it stops the heart, and you do die. But in the process there is a period of just intense and searing pain."
Maggie's survival was taken as an act of God. She became a celebrity, nicknamed Half-Hangit Maggie. She lived another 40 years, and today a tavern stands in her honor near the site of her hanging. Inetta de Balsham was sentenced to death for harboring thieves in 1264.
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.
The last execution in Australia took place in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Victoria. Between Ryan's execution in 1967 and 1984, several more people were sentenced to death, but had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
Australia's last execution took place in February 1967. Six years later, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 (Cth) (1973 Act). Similar State legislation outlawed the practice in the remaining Australian jurisdictions.
MORATORIUM ON THE USE OF THE DEATH PENALTY
Australia's opposition to the death penalty is a long-standing, bipartisan policy position. All jurisdictions in Australia abolished the death penalty by 1985. In 2010, the Australian government passed legislation that prohibited the reintroduction of capital punishment.
Also known as 'death by a thousand cuts' or 'slow slicing', Lingchi involved the condemned having small pieces of flesh removed with a knife in a manner that would delay death. The number of slices could be just a handful or could number in the thousands.
In some medieval societies, a person who survived a death penalty, like hanging, was set free, because it was believed that God intervened in the matter of justice to allow the person to live. However, no society today operates this principle, and a person who survives will promptly be subject to execution again.
The first death sentence historically recorded occurred in 16th Century BC Egypt where the wrongdoer, a member of nobility, was accused of magic, and ordered to take his own life.
If all goes as planned, the entire execution takes about five minutes, with death usually occurring less than two minutes after the final injection. However, botched lethal injections have sometimes required more than two hours to achieve death.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty for murder in Japan, and is applied in cases of multiple murder or aggravated single murder. Executions in Japan are carried out by hanging, and the country has seven execution chambers, all located in major cities.
Since 2000, 98 inmates have been executed in Japan, with the most recent being the execution of Tomohiro Katō, the perpetrator of the Akihabara massacre in 2008, who was executed on 26 July 2022. There are currently 106 death row inmates awaiting execution.
Most three-drug protocols use an anesthetic or sedative, followed by a drug to paralyze the inmate, and finally a drug to stop the heart. The one and two-drug protocols typically use an overdose of an anesthetic or sedative to cause death.
The arm of the condemned person is swabbed with alcohol before the cannula is inserted.
Critics of the electric chair dispute whether the first jolt of electricity reliably induces immediate unconsciousness as proponents often claim. Witness testimony, botched electrocutions (see Willie Francis and Allen Lee Davis), and post-mortem examinations suggest that execution by electric chair is often painful.
The Penal Execution Code specifies that the execution is to be carried out "privately by shooting".
In 2022, China executed at least 1,000 people, but the number is likely to be several 1,000s according to the source. Iran followed in second with at least 314 executions.
Executions are carried out by shooting using a handgun aimed at the heart from the back, or aimed at the brain stem under the ear if the prisoner had consented to organ donation prior to the withdrawal of legal death row organ donation.