How cruel is a person: types and methods of the death penalty of the past. Modern types of death penalty (13 photos)

The main news of today was undoubtedly the execution of the DPRK Defense Minister on charges of treason. The minister was shot at a military school from an anti-aircraft gun. In this regard, I would like to recall what types of death penalty exist in the world today.

The death penalty is the capital punishment, which today is prohibited in many countries of the world. And where it is permitted, it is used only for extremely serious crimes. Although there are countries (for example, China) where the death penalty is still used quite widely for much lesser offenses, such as bribery, pimping, counterfeiting banknotes, tax evasion, poaching and others.

In Russian and Soviet legal practice, the euphemisms “the highest measure of social protection”, “the capital punishment”, and in later times “an exceptional measure of punishment” were used to refer to the death penalty at different times, since it was officially believed that the death penalty in the USSR was the penalty is not practiced, but is applied as an exception as punishment for particularly serious ordinary and state crimes.

Today there are 6 different types of death penalty most common in the world.

A type of death penalty in which killing is achieved using a firearm. Currently the most common of all other methods.

The execution is carried out, as a rule, from shotguns or rifles, less often from other hand-held firearms. The number of shooters is usually from 4 to 12, but may vary depending on the situation. Sometimes, to ease the conscience, live ammunition is mixed with blanks. Thus, none of the shooters knows whether he was the one who fired the fatal shot.

According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, execution is the only form of death penalty. Although the death penalty has not been abolished by law in our country, only a moratorium on it is observed, caused by international obligations related to Russia’s accession to PACE. There has been no actual execution of a death sentence since 1996.

In Belarus, shooting is also the only method of executing the death penalty.

Until 1987, firing squad was the official method of execution in the GDR.

In the United States, firing squad is retained as a backup method of execution in one state—Oklahoma; in addition, theoretically, 3 people sentenced to death in the state of Utah before the legislative abolition of execution here could be shot, since this law does not have retroactive effect.

In China, where the largest number of death sentences are carried out today, a kneeling convict is shot in the back of the head with a machine gun. The authorities periodically organize public demonstration executions of convicted bribe-taking government officials.

Today, 18 countries use hanging as the only or one of several forms of execution.

A type of death penalty consisting of strangulation with a noose under the influence of the weight of the body.

Murder by hanging was first used by the ancient Celts, making human sacrifices to the air god Esus. Cervantes mentioned execution by hanging in the 17th century.

In Russia, hanging was practiced during the imperial period (for example, the execution of the Decembrists, “Stolypin ties,” etc.) and by warring parties during the civil war.

Hanging was later practiced during the short period of wartime and the early post-war years against war criminals and Nazi collaborators. At the Nuremberg trials, 12 senior leaders of the Third Reich were sentenced to death by hanging.

Today, 19 countries use hanging as the only or one of several forms of execution.

A method of carrying out the death penalty, which consists of introducing a sentenced solution of poisons into the body.

Used at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, the method was developed in 1977 by forensic expert Jay Chapman and approved by Stanley Deutsch. The condemned person is fixed in a special chair, and two tubes are inserted into his veins. First, the sentenced person is injected with the drug sodium thiopental - it is usually used (in a smaller dose) for anesthesia during operations. Pavulon, which paralyzes the respiratory muscles, and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest, are then injected through the tubes. Texas and Oklahoma soon passed laws allowing the combination; the first use occurred in Texas in late 1982. Following them, similar laws were adopted in 34 other US states.

Death occurs between 5 and 18 minutes after the start of the execution. There is a special machine for administering drugs, but most states prefer to administer solutions manually, believing this to be more reliable.

Today, 4 countries use lethal injection as the only or one of several types of execution.

A device used to carry out death sentences in some US states.

The electric chair is a chair made of dielectric material with armrests and a high back, equipped with belts to firmly secure the prisoner. The arms are attached to the armrests, the legs are secured in special clamps on the chair legs. The chair also comes with a special helmet. Electrical contacts are connected to the ankle attachment points and to the helmet. The hardware includes a step-up transformer. During the execution, an alternating current with a voltage of about 2700 V is supplied to the contacts; the current limiting system maintains a current through the body of the convicted person of about 5 A.

The electric chair was first used in the United States on August 6, 1890, at the Auburn Penitentiary in New York. William Kemmler, the murderer, became the first person to be executed in this manner. Currently, it can be used in seven states - Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia at the choice of the convicted person along with lethal injection, and in Kentucky and Tennessee only those who committed a crime before a certain date have the right to choose the use of the electric chair.

Today, the electric chair is used as the only or one of several types of execution only in the United States.

The physical separation of the head from the body is accomplished using a special tool - a guillotine or chopping tools - an ax, sword, knife.

Decapitation certainly leads to brain death as a result of rapidly progressing ischemia. Brain death occurs within minutes of the head being separated from the body. Stories that the head looked at the executioner, recognized its name and even tried to speak are, from the point of view of neurophysiology, greatly exaggerated. The head loses consciousness 300 milliseconds after being severed and almost all higher nervous activity, including the ability to feel pain, is permanently stopped. Some reflexes and facial muscle spasms may continue for several minutes.

Today, 10 countries in the world have laws allowing beheading as the death penalty, however, reliable information about their use exists only in relation to Saudi Arabia. Most beheadings these days have been carried out in jurisdictions under Islamic Sharia law, by militant Islamists in hotspots, and by paramilitary organizations and drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico.

A type of death penalty familiar to the ancient Jews.

Currently, stoning is practiced in some Muslim countries. As of January 1, 1989, stoning remained in the legislation of six countries around the world. Several media reports reported the execution of a teenage girl in Somalia on October 27, 2008 by an Islamist court after she was allegedly raped by three men on the way from her hometown of Kismayo to visit relatives in Mogadishu. According to Amnesty International, the convicted woman was only thirteen years old. At the same time, the BBC noted that journalists present at the execution estimated her age at 23 years old, and convicting a 13-year-old girl for adultery would be contrary to Islamic law.

On January 16, 2015, it was reported that militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were stoning a woman accused of adultery in the Iraqi city of Mosul they captured.

Hanging

Palestinian terrorists hanged in a market square in Damascus. On the necks of the condemned hangs a sign “In the name of the Syrian people.” D.R.

For centuries, people have hanged their own kind. Along with beheading and bonfire, hanging was the most popular method of execution in almost all ancient civilizations. It is still used legally in more than eighty countries.

It is impossible not to recognize the simplicity, cost savings and ease of execution inherent in hanging. It is for these reasons that every second suicide candidate uses a rope. Making a tightening loop is super easy... and can be used anywhere!

Like shooting, hanging provides the opportunity for mass executions.

Mass hanging in the Netherlands. Engraving by Hogenberg. National Library. Paris.

It was exactly this kind of execution during the Thirty Years' War that Jacques Callot captured in his engraving already in the 17th century: a huge oak tree on which the corpses of sixty soldiers swayed. Let us remember how, by order of Peter I in the fall of 1698, in just a few days several hundred archers ended up on the gallows. Two and a half centuries later, in 1917, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the commander-in-chief of the German forces in East Africa, hanged hundreds of aborigines in two days on long gallows that stretched to the horizon. During World War II, German troops hanged Soviet partisans by the hundreds. Such examples can be given endlessly.

Hanging is carried out using a gallows. Usually it consists of a vertical post and a horizontal beam of smaller length and diameter, which is attached to the top of the post - a rope is fixed to it. Sometimes for collective hanging they use a gallows made of two vertical posts connected at the top by a beam on which ropes are attached.

These two models - with slight differences depending on the country and people - represent almost the complete set of designs used for hanging. True, other options are also known, for example the Turkish one, which was used at the beginning of the 20th century: the “Turkish-style” gallows consists of three beams brought together at one point in the form of a pyramid.

Or the Chinese "hanging cage", but it serves more for suffocation than for hanging.

The principle of hanging is simple: the noose around the neck of the person being executed, under the weight of his weight, is tightened with a force sufficient to stop the functioning of a number of vital organs.

Compression of the carotid arteries cuts off blood circulation, causing brain death. Depending on the method used, cervical vertebrae are sometimes broken and the spinal cord is damaged.

The agony can last a long time...

There are three main methods of hanging.

The first is as follows: a person is forced to climb onto an elevated platform - a chair, a table, a cart, a horse, a ladder, a noose of rope tied to a gallows or a tree branch is put around his neck, and the support is knocked out from under his feet, sometimes pushing the victim forward.

This is the most ordinary, but most common method. The executed person dies slowly and painfully. In the past, it often happened that the executioner hung with his whole body on the legs of the condemned man to speed up the execution.

Execution by hanging. Wood engraving published by de Souvigny in Praxis Criminis Persequende. Private count

This is exactly how the ex-chairman of the Turkish Council, Menderes, was executed at hard labor in Imsala in 1961. He was forced to climb onto an ordinary table that stood under the gallows, which the executioner kicked out. More recently, in 1987, in Libya, six people sentenced to public hanging - the execution was broadcast on television - climbed onto stools that were knocked over by the executioner.

The second method: a noose is placed around the condemned person’s neck, the rope is attached to a roller or movable support, and the condemned person is lifted from the ground using it. He is pulled up instead of thrown down.

This is how people were usually lynched in the USA. In the 70-80s of the 20th century, public hangings were carried out in the same way in Iraq, Iran and Syria. In fact, we are talking about suffocation; the agony in this case lasts up to half an hour or longer.

Hanging of deserters. Engraving by Jacques Callot. Private count

Finally, with the third method of hanging, suffocation and anemia of the brain are accompanied by a fracture of the cervical vertebrae.

This method, developed by the British, has a reputation for being painless and guaranteeing instant death (we will describe what it actually is later). This method is certainly more effective than the two previous ones, but it requires some devices: a scaffold of a certain height with a sliding floor - the body falls, the rope is sharply pulled, breaking, in theory, the vertebrae of the convicted person.

This method would be perfected in the second half of the 19th century. It is now used in the United States and some African and Asian countries, which were inspired by the findings of a special study by the British Royal Commission conducted in 1953. The Commission, having examined all types of execution according to the criteria of “humanity, reliability and decency”, came to the conclusion that hanging, then in force in Great Britain, should be retained.

Throughout Europe, commoners were hanged for centuries, while nobles were routinely beheaded. An old French proverb said: “The ax is for the nobles, the rope is for the commoners.” If they wanted to humiliate a nobleman, his corpse was hanged after execution in the manner appropriate to his title and rank. Thus, on the Montfaucon gallows, five financial intendants and one minister were strung up: Gerard de la Guette, Pierre Remy, Jean de Montagu, Olivier Ledem, Jacques de la Baume and Enguerrand de Marigny. Their headless bodies were hung by the armpits.

The corpses were removed from the gallows only after they began to decompose, in order to frighten the townsfolk for as long as possible. The remains were thrown into an ossuary.

Hanging was already considered a shameful execution in ancient times. The Old Testament says that Joshua ordered the killing of five Amorite kings who were besieging Gibeon, hanging their corpses on five gallows and leaving them there until sunset.

At one time the gallows were not high. To make the execution more humiliating, they were raised, and the sentence began to specify that they should be hanged “high and short.” The higher, the more humiliating the execution. The highest beam, facing north, began to be called “Jewish”.

The humiliating nature of hanging has persisted in modern consciousness. A relatively recent example of this is Germany. The civil penal code of 1871 provided for beheading, and the military regulations for shooting (however, the gallows were still used to execute “natives” in the protectorates), but Hitler in 1933 ordered the return of the gallows to the country to execute “particularly immoral criminals” by hanging. Since then, those convicted of civil crimes were punished with the guillotine and an ax, and everyone who was found “guilty of causing damage to the German people” was sent to the gallows.

“Hang them like cattle!” - said the Fuhrer. In July 1944, he ordered the officers involved in the conspiracy against him to be hanged on carcass hooks.

Insulting “head down”...

Historian John W. Wheeler Bennett describes this collective execution: “The first to enter was sixty-year-old Erwin von Witzleben, wearing a prisoner's robe and wooden shoes... He was placed under one of the hooks, handcuffed and stripped to the waist. They put a noose of thin short rope around his neck. The executioners lifted the condemned man, threw the other end of the rope over the hook and tied it tightly, after which they released him and he fell down. While he squirmed furiously, suffering unspeakably, he was stripped naked... He struggled until exhaustion. Death occurred within five minutes.”

The bodies were left hanging until complete decomposition. Engraving. Private count

The Soviet criminal code provided for execution by firing squad, reserving hanging for “war criminals.”

As for hanging upside down, it was always used for the ultimate humiliation. This is exactly how on April 28, 1945, the corpses of the executed Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci were hanged in Loreto Square.

Many engravings from the 14th and 15th centuries show two gallows rising on the Place de Grève in Paris. The ritual of hanging in the 16th and 17th centuries is described in detail in a text by an unknown author, quoted by many 19th-century historians.

The execution of criminals usually took place on a large scale on Sunday or a holiday. “The victim was taken to execution, seated on a cart with his back to the horse. There was a priest nearby. The executioner is behind. Three ropes hung around the convict’s neck: two as thick as the little finger, called “tortuses,” with a sliding loop at the end. The third, nicknamed “Zhet,” served to yank the victim from the stairs or, following the expression of that time, “send to eternity.” When the cart arrived at the foot of the gallows, where monks or penitents were already standing singing Salve Regina, the executioner was the first, backing up, to climb the ladder leaning against the gallows, using ropes to drag the condemned man to himself, who was forced to climb after him. Having climbed up, the executioner quickly tied both “tortuses” to the gallows beam and, holding the “Jet” wound around his hand, threw the victim off the steps with a blow of his knee, he swung in the air, and was strangled by the sliding noose.”

One node makes all the difference!

Then the executioner stood with his feet on the bound hands of the hanged man and, holding onto the gallows, made several strong pushes, finishing off the condemned man and making sure that the strangulation was successful. Let us remember that executioners often did not bother using three ropes, limiting themselves to one.

In Paris and many other cities of France, there was a custom: if a condemned person passed by a monastery, the nuns had to bring him a glass of wine and a piece of bread.

A huge crowd always gathered for the ceremony of sad food - for superstitious people it was a rare opportunity to touch the condemned person. After the execution, the confessor and judicial police officers went to the castle, where a table awaited them, laid at the expense of the city.

Hanging, which very quickly became a real folk spectacle, prompted executioners not only to demonstrate their skills in front of a discerning public, but also to “stage” the execution, especially in cases of collective hangings. So they sought to “aestheticize” executions. In 1562, when the Catholics took Angers, the Protestants were hanged symmetrically. Subsequently, there were cases of distribution of victims among the gallows depending on weight and height. The executioners, who alternated between tall and short, fat and thin, deserved rave reviews.

He has hundreds of executions to his name

Albert Pierrepoint took over from his father and uncle and served as His Majesty's official executioner until the death penalty for criminal offenses was abolished in 1966. In November 1950, he was called to testify before the Royal Commission, which examined methods of execution around the world, to give an opinion on whether hanging should be retained in Britain. Here are some excerpts from his testimony:

How long have you been working as an executioner?

P: About twenty years.

How many executions have you carried out?

P: Several hundred.

Did you have any difficulties?

P.: Once in my entire career.

What exactly happened?

P: He was a boor. We were unlucky with him. It was not an Englishman. He created a real scandal.

Is this the only case?

P: There were perhaps two or three more, for example a fainting spell at the last moment, but nothing worth mentioning.

Can you confirm that most convicts step onto the hatch calmly and with dignity?

P.: From my own experience, I can say that in 99% of cases this is exactly what happens. Not a bad number, isn't it?

Do you always operate the hatch yourself?

P.: Yes. The executioner must do this himself. Its' his job.

Does your work seem too exhausting?

P.: I'm used to it.

Do you ever worry?

P.: No!

I think people ask you questions about your profession?

P: Yes, but I refuse to talk about it. For me this is sacred.

Historical reference

France: until 1449, women were not hanged for reasons of decency, but buried alive. In 1448, during the trial, a gypsy woman demanded to be hanged. And they hanged her with her skirt tied to her knees. England: a special order on the “regime of mercy” provided for the pardon of some prisoners due to physical features of their physique, for example, a too thick neck. Between 1940 and 1955, five convicts took advantage of this article.

South Africa: The country holds the record for civilian death sentences by hanging: 1,861 between 1978 and 1988.

Bangladesh: Ban on hanging teenagers who were under sixteen years of age at the time of the crime.

Burma: Children over seven years of age can be sentenced to death unless they are declared to lack maturity.

Sudan: The oldest person hanged in the 20th century, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was seventy-two years old in 1985.

Iran: Since 1979, thousands of convicts have been hanged under the Khodood law (for crimes against the will of Allah).

USA: in 1900, 27 states voted for the electric chair instead of hanging, which was considered more cruel and inhumane. Now it has been preserved in only four - in Washington, Montana, Delaware, and Kansas. In the first three, the right to choose lethal injection is given.

Libya: The April 1984 hanging of ten Tripoli University students and the execution of nine others in 1987 were broadcast on television.

Nigeria: in 1988, there were twelve public hangings: according to the official version, the authorities wanted to “reduce the workload”, which became one of the causes of unrest in prisons.

Japan: This country is known for having the longest waiting period between conviction and execution. Sadami Hirasawa, sentenced to hang in 1950, died of old age in 1987, although he could have ended every day in a noose. Anonymity: the names of executed Japanese are never disclosed by the administration or published in the press, so as not to disgrace the families.

The Price of Blood: The Islamic Code stipulates that anyone convicted of murder can be executed only with the consent of the victim's closest relative, who is free to collect compensation from the perpetrator - the "price of blood" - instead of execution.

Television: Cameroon, Zaire, Ethiopia, Iran, Kuwait, Mozambique, Sudan, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Uganda. All of these countries carried out public hangings between 1970 and 1985, with at least half of the executions filmed for television or broadcast live.

Body price: Swaziland is the only country in the world that provides for hanging for trafficking in human bodies. In 1983, seven men and women were hanged for such a crime. In 1985, a man was sentenced to death for selling his nephew for ritual murder. In 1986, two people were hanged for killing a child during a ritual murder.

Pregnant women: In principle, pregnant women are not hanged in any country in the world. Some nations change the measure of restraint, others wait for the birth and immediately carry out the sentence, or wait from two months to two years.

Hanging in Croatia. Traditionally, the condemned were hanged in sewn bags. Private count

Sentences in criminal cases often specified: “Must hang until death occurs.”

This formulation was not accidental.

Sometimes the executioner failed to hang the condemned man the first time. Then he took him down, pricked his heels, bringing him to consciousness, and hung him again. Such “mistakes” happened much more often than one might assume; examples of this were noted even in the middle of the 19th century.

Previously, the hanging technique depended on the performer and the city where the execution took place.

Thus, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until the revolution, the Parisian executioner placed a sliding noose under the jaw and occipital bone of the condemned man, which in most cases led to a broken neck.

The executioner stood on the victim’s tied hands and on this improvised stirrup he jumped as hard as he could. This method of execution was nicknamed “brittle withers.”

Other executioners, such as those in Lyon and Marseille, preferred to place the slip knot over the back of the head. The rope had a second blind knot that prevented it from slipping under the chin. With this method of hanging, the executioner stood not on his hands, but on the head of the condemned man, pushing it forward so that the blind knot would fall on the larynx or trachea, which often led to their rupture.

Today, according to the "English method", the rope is placed under the left side of the lower jaw. The advantage of this method is the high likelihood of spinal fracture.

In the US, the loop knot is placed behind the right ear. This method of hanging leads to a strong stretching of the neck, and sometimes to the tearing off of the head.

Execution in Cairo in 1907. Engraving by Clément Auguste Andrieu. XIX century Private count

Let us remember that hanging by the neck was not the only widespread method. Previously, hanging by the limbs was used quite often, but, as a rule, as an additional torture. They hung the victim by the hands over the fire, by the legs - giving the victim to be eaten by dogs; such an execution lasted for hours and was terrible.

Hanging by the armpits was fatal in itself and guaranteed prolonged agony. The pressure of the belt or rope was so strong that it stopped blood circulation and led to paralysis of the pectoral muscles and suffocation. Many convicts, suspended in this way for two or three hours, were removed from the gallows already dead, and even if alive, they did not live long after this terrible torture. Adult defendants were sentenced to a similar “slow hanging”, forcing them to confess to a crime or complicity. Children and teenagers were also often hanged for capital crimes. For example, in 1722, the younger brother of the robber Cartouche, who was not yet fifteen years old, was executed in this way.

Some countries sought to extend the execution procedure. So, in the 19th century in Turkey, the hands of hanged people were not tied so that they could grab the rope above their heads and hold on until their strength left them and after a long agony death came.

According to European custom, the bodies of hanged people were not removed until they began to decompose. Hence the gallows, nicknamed “bandit”, which should not be confused with ordinary gallows. On them hung not only the bodies of those hanged, but also the corpses of convicts killed by other means.

“Bandit gallows” personified royal justice and served as a reminder of the prerogatives of the nobility, and at the same time were used to intimidate criminals. For greater edification, they were placed along crowded roads, mainly on hillocks.

Their design varied depending on the title of the lord holding court: a nobleman without a title - two beams, the owner of the castle - three, a baron - four, a count - six, a duke - eight, a king - as many as he considered necessary.

The royal “bandit gallows” of Paris, introduced by Philip the Fair, were the most famous in France: they usually “flaunted” fifty to sixty hanged people. They rose in the north of the capital, approximately where Buttes-Chaumont is now located - at that time this place was called the “Montfaucon Hills”. Soon the gallows themselves began to be called that.

Hanging children

When children were executed in European countries, they most often resorted to death by hanging. One of the main reasons was class: children of nobles rarely appeared in court.

France. If we were talking about children under 13–14 years old, they were hanged by the armpits; death from suffocation usually occurred within two to three hours.

England. The country where the largest number of children were sent to the gallows, they were hanged by the neck like adults. Hanging of children continued until 1833, the last such sentence being imposed on a nine-year-old boy accused of stealing ink.

When many countries in Europe had already abolished the death penalty, the English criminal code stated that children could be hanged from the age of seven if there was “clear evidence of mischief.”

In 1800, a ten-year-old child was hanged in London for fraud. He falsified the ledger of a haberdashery store. The following year Andrew Branning was executed. He stole a spoon. In 1808, a seven-year-old child was hanged in Chelmsford on charges of arson. That same year, a 13-year-old boy was hanged on the same charge in Maidstone. This happened throughout the first half of the 19th century.

The writer Samuel Rogers writes in Table Talk that he saw a group of girls in colorful dresses being taken away to be hanged at Tyburn. Greville, who followed the trial of several very young boys condemned to hanging, who burst into tears after the verdict was announced, writes: “It became clear that they were completely unprepared for this. I’ve never seen boys cry like that.”

It may be assumed that teenagers are no longer legally executed, although in 1987 Iraqi authorities executed fourteen Kurdish teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 after a mock court-martial.

Montfaucon looked like a huge block of stone: 12.20 meters long and 9.15 meters wide. The rubble base served as a platform to which one climbed up a stone staircase; the entrance was blocked by a massive door.

Sixteen square stone pillars, ten meters high, rose on three sides of this platform. At the very top and in the middle, the supports were connected by wooden beams from which iron chains hung for corpses.

Long, strong ladders standing at the supports allowed the executioners to hang the living, as well as the corpses of those hanged, wheeled and beheaded in other parts of the city.

Hanging of two murderers in Tunisia in 1905. Engraving. Private count

Hanging in Tunisia in 1909. Photographic postcard. Private count

In the center there was a huge pit where the executioners dumped rotting remains when they needed to make room on the beams.

This terrible dump of corpses was a source of food for thousands of crows that lived on Montfaucon.

It is easy to imagine how ominous Montfaucon looked, especially when, due to a lack of space, they decided to expand it by building two other “bandit gallows” nearby in 1416 and 1457 - the gallows of the Church of Saint-Laurent and the gallows of Montigny.

Hanging on Montfaucon would cease during the reign of Louis XIII, and the structure itself would be completely destroyed in 1761. But hanging will disappear in France only at the end of the 18th century, in England in the second half of the 19th century, and until then it will be very popular.

As we have already said, gallows - ordinary and bandit - were used not only for executions, but also for putting those executed on public display. In every city and almost every village, not only in Europe, but also in newly colonized lands, they were stationary.

It would seem that in such conditions people had to live in constant fear. Nothing like this. They learned to ignore the decomposed bodies swinging from the gallows. In an effort to frighten the people, they were taught to be indifferent. In France, several centuries before the revolution that gave birth to the “guillotine for all,” hanging became “entertainment,” “fun.”

Some came to drink and eat under the gallows, others looked for mandrake root there or visited for a piece of “lucky” rope.

The terrible stench, rotten or withered bodies swaying in the wind did not prevent innkeepers and innkeepers from trading in the immediate vicinity of the gallows. People led a cheerful life.

The Hanged Men and Superstitions

It has always been believed that whoever touches a hanged man will gain supernatural powers, good or evil. According to popular beliefs, nails, teeth, the body of a hanged man and the rope used for execution could relieve pain and treat some diseases, help women in labor, cast a spell, and bring good luck in games and the lottery.

Goya's famous painting depicts a Spanish woman pulling out a tooth from a corpse right on the gallows.

After public executions at night, people could often be seen at the gallows looking for mandrake - a magical plant that supposedly grows from the sperm of the hanged man.

In his Natural History, Buffon writes that French women and residents of other European countries who wanted to get rid of infertility had to walk under the body of a hanged criminal.

In England, at the dawn of the 19th century, mothers brought sick children to the scaffold to be touched by the hand of the executed, believing that it had a healing gift.

After the execution, pieces were broken off from the gallows to make a toothache remedy.

Superstitions associated with the hanged also extended to executioners: they were credited with healing abilities, which were allegedly passed on by inheritance, like their craft. In fact, their grim activities gave them some anatomical knowledge, and executioners often became skilled chiropractors.

But mainly the executioners were credited with the ability to prepare miraculous creams and ointments based on “human fat” and “bones of hanged men,” which were sold for their weight in gold.

Jacques Delarue, in his work on executioners, writes that superstitions associated with those sentenced to death still persisted in the middle of the 19th century: as early as 1865, one could find sick and disabled people gathering around the scaffold in the hope of picking up a few drops of blood that would will heal.

Let us remember that during the last public execution in France in 1939, many “spectators”, out of superstition, dipped their handkerchiefs into the blood splashes on the pavement.

Pulling out the teeth of a hanged man. Engraving by Goya.

Francois Villon and his friends were one of these. Let's remember his poems:

And they went to Montfaucon,

Where a large crowd has already gathered,

It was full of girls and noisy,

And the body trade began.

The story told by Brantome shows that people were so accustomed to hanging that they did not feel any disgust at all. A certain young woman, whose husband was hanged, went to the gallows, guarded by soldiers. One of the guards decided to hit on her, and was so successful that “he twice had the pleasure of laying her on the coffin of his own husband, who served as their bed.”

Three hundred reasons to be hanged!

Another example of the lack of edification of public hangings dates back to 1820. According to the English report, of the two hundred and fifty condemned, one hundred and seventy had already been present at one or more hangings. A similar document, dated 1886, shows that of the one hundred and sixty-seven prisoners condemned to hang at Bristol Gaol, only three never attended an execution. It got to the point that hanging was used not only for an attempt on property, but also for the slightest offense. Commoners were hanged for any offense.

In 1535, under penalty of hanging, it was ordered to shave the beard, since this distinguished nobles and military men from people of other classes. Ordinary petty theft also led to the gallows. You pulled out a turnip or caught a carp - and there’s a rope waiting for you. Back in 1762, a maid named Antoinette Toutant was hanged on the Place de Greve for stealing an embroidered napkin.

Judge Lynch's Gallows

Judge Lynch, from whom the word “lynching” comes, is most likely a fictional character. According to one hypothesis, in the 17th century there lived a certain judge named Lee Lynch, who, using the absolute power given to him by his fellow citizens, allegedly cleared the country of evildoers through drastic measures. According to another version, Lynch was a farmer from Virginia or the founder of the city of Lynchburg in this state.

At the dawn of American colonization in a vast country where numerous adventurers flocked, not so many representatives of justice were unable to apply existing laws, so in all states, in particular in California, Colorado, Oregon and Nevada, committees of vigilant citizens began to be formed, which hanged criminals caught in the act without any trial or investigation. Despite the gradual establishment of a legal system, lynchings occurred every year until the mid-20th century. The most common victims were blacks in segregationist states. It is believed that at least 4,900 people, mostly blacks, were lynched between 1900 and 1944. After hanging, many were doused with gasoline and set on fire.

Before the revolution, the French criminal code listed two hundred and fifteen crimes punishable by hanging. The criminal code of England, in the full sense of the word, the country of the gallows, was even more severe. They were sentenced to hanging without taking into account mitigating circumstances for any offense, regardless of severity. In 1823, in a document that would later be called the Bloody Code, there were more than three hundred and fifty crimes punishable by capital punishment.

In 1837, there were two hundred and twenty of them left in the code. Only in 1839 the number of crimes punishable by death was reduced to fifteen, and in 1861 to four. Thus, in England in the 19th century, as in the dark Middle Ages, people were hanged for stealing a vegetable or for cutting down a tree in someone else’s forest...

The death penalty was imposed for theft of a sum exceeding twelve pence. In some countries, almost the same thing is happening now. In Malaysia, for example, anyone found in possession of fifteen grams of heroin or more than two hundred grams of Indian hemp is hanged. From 1985 to 1993, more than a hundred people were hanged for such offenses.

Until complete decomposition

In the 18th century, hanging days were declared non-working days, and at the dawn of the 19th century gallows were still erected throughout England. There were so many of them that they often served as milestones.

The practice of leaving bodies on the gallows until they were completely decomposed persisted in England until 1832; the last person to suffer this fate is considered to be a certain James Cook.

Arthur Koestler, in Reflections on a Hanging, recalls that in the 19th century, execution was an elaborate ceremony and was considered a first-class spectacle by the gentry. People came from all over England to attend the “beautiful” hanging.

In 1807, more than forty thousand people gathered for the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. About a hundred people died in the stampede. In the 19th century, some European countries had already abolished the death penalty, and in England seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old children were hanged. Public hanging of children continued until 1833. The last death sentence of this kind was imposed on a nine-year-old boy who stole ink. But he was not executed: public opinion demanded and achieved a mitigation of the punishment.

In the 19th century, there were often cases when those hanged in a hurry did not die immediately. The number of convicts who hung on the gallows for more than half an hour and survived is truly impressive. In the same 19th century, an incident occurred with a certain Green: he came to life already in a coffin.

Long drop execution in London. Engraving. XIX century Private count

During autopsies, which became a mandatory procedure since 1880, hanged people often came back to life right on the pathologist’s table.

Arthur Koestler told us the most incredible story. The available evidence eliminates the slightest doubt about its veracity, and besides, the source of information was a famous practitioner. In Germany, a hanged man woke up in an anatomical lab, got up and ran away, using the help of a forensic expert.

In 1927, two English convicts were taken from the gallows after fifteen minutes, but they began to breathe spasmodically, which meant that the condemned men had returned to life, and they were hastily brought back for another half hour.

Hanging was a "fine art" and England tried to achieve the highest degree of perfection in it. In the first half of the 20th century, commissions were repeatedly established in the country to solve problems related to the death penalty. The latest research was carried out by the English Royal Commission (1949–1953), which, having studied all types of execution, concluded that the fastest and most reliable method of instant death could be considered “long drop,” which involved a fracture of the cervical vertebrae as a result of a sharp fall.

The British claim that thanks to the “long drop,” hanging has become much more humane. Photo. Private count D.R.

The so-called “long drop” was invented by the Irish in the 19th century, although many English executioners demanded credit for their authorship. This method combined all the scientific rules of hanging, which allowed the British to claim, until the abolition of the death penalty for criminal offenses in December 1964, that they had “successfully transformed the originally barbaric execution by hanging into a humane method.” This “English” hanging, which is currently the most common method in the world, takes place according to a strictly prescribed ritual. The convict's hands are tied behind his back, then he is placed on the hatch exactly at the line of the junction of two hinged doors, fixed horizontally with two iron rods at the level of the scaffold floor. When the lever is lowered or the locking cord is cut, the doors swing open. The prisoner standing on the hatch has his ankles tied and his head covered with a white, black or beige - depending on the country - hood. The loop is placed around the neck so that the knot is under the left side of the lower jaw. The rope is coiled over the gallows, and when the executioner opens the hatch, it unwinds after the falling body. The system for attaching the hemp rope to the gallows allows it to be shortened or lengthened as necessary.

Hanging of two convicts in Ethiopia in 1935. Photo "Keystone".

Meaning of rope

The material and quality of the rope, which are of great importance during hanging, were carefully determined by the executioner; this was part of his duties.

George Mauledon, nicknamed the "Prince of Executioners", served in this position for twenty years (from 1874 to 1894). He used ropes made to his order. He took hemp from Kentucky, wove it in St. Louis, and wove it in Fort Smith. Then the executioner soaked it in a mixture based on vegetable oil so that the knot would slide better and the rope itself would not stretch. George Moledon set a unique record that no one has even come close to: one of his ropes was used in twenty-seven hangings.

Another important element is the knot. It is believed that for good sliding the knot is made in thirteen turns. In fact, there are never more than eight or nine of them, which is approximately a ten-centimeter roller.

When the noose is placed around the neck, it must be tightened without in any way cutting off the blood circulation.

The coils of the noose are located under the left jaw bone, exactly under the ear. Having correctly positioned the noose, the executioner must release a certain length of rope, which varies depending on the weight of the convict, age, build and his physiological characteristics. Thus, in 1905 in Chicago, murderer Robert Gardiner avoided hanging due to the ossification of the vertebrae and tissues, which excluded this type of execution. When hanging, one rule applies: the heavier the convicted person, the shorter the rope should be.

There are many weight/rope charts designed to eliminate unpleasant surprises: if the rope is too short, the prisoner will suffer from suffocation, and if it is too long, his head will be blown off.

Since the condemned man was unconscious, he was tied to a chair and hanged in a sitting position. England. 1932 Photography. Private count D.R.

Execution of killer Raines Deacy in Kentucky. The sentence is carried out by a female executioner. 1936 Photo "Keystone".

This detail determines the “quality” of the execution. The length of the rope from the sliding loop to the attachment point is determined depending on the height and weight of the convicted person. In most countries, these parameters are reflected in the correspondence tables that are available to executioners. Before each hanging, a thorough check is carried out with a bag of sand whose weight is equal to the weight of the condemned person.

The risks are very real. If the rope is not long enough and the vertebrae do not break, the condemned person will have to slowly die from suffocation, but if it is too long, then the executed person’s head will be torn off due to too long a fall. According to the rules, an eighty-kilogram person must fall from a height of 2.40 meters, the length of the rope must be reduced by 5 centimeters for every three additional kilograms.

However, the “correspondence tables” can be adjusted taking into account the characteristics of the convicts: age, obesity, physical data, especially muscle strength.

In 1880, newspapers reported the “resurrection” of a certain Hungarian Takács, who hung there for ten minutes and returned to life half an hour later. He died from his injuries only three days later. According to the doctors, this “anomaly” was due to the extremely strong structure of the throat, protruding lymph glands and the fact that it was removed “ahead of schedule.”

In preparation for the execution of Robert Goodale, executioner Berry, who had experience of more than two hundred hangings, calculated that, given the weight of the condemned man, the required fall height should be 2.3 meters. After examining him, he discovered that his neck muscles were very weak, and reduced the length of the rope to 1.72 meters, that is, by 48 centimeters. However, these measures were not enough; Goodale's neck was even weaker than it looked, and the victim's head was torn off with a rope.

Similar terrible cases were observed in France, Canada, the USA and Austria. Warden Clinton Duffy, director of St. Quentin Prison (California), who was present as a witness or supervisor at more than one hundred and fifty hanging and gas chamber executions, described one such execution in which the rope was too long.

“The face of the convict was shattered into pieces. A head half torn off from the body, eyes bulging out of their sockets, burst blood vessels, a swollen tongue.” He also noticed the terrible smell of urine and excrement. Duffy also spoke about another hanging, when the rope was too short: “The condemned man slowly suffocated for about a quarter of an hour, breathing heavily, wheezing like a dying pig. He was convulsing, his body was spinning like a top. I had to hang on to his legs so that the rope would not break from the powerful shocks. The condemned man turned purple and his tongue was swollen.”

Public hanging in Iran. Photo. TF1 archives.

To avoid such failures, Pierrepoint, the last executioner of the British kingdom, usually, a few hours before the execution, carefully examined the condemned person through the camera peephole.

Pierrepoint claimed that from the moment he took the condemned man out of the cell until the release of the hatch lever, no more than ten to twelve seconds passed. If in other prisons where he worked, the cell was further from the gallows, then, as he said, everything took about twenty-five seconds.

But is speed of execution an indisputable proof of effectiveness?

Hanging in peace

Here is a list of seventy-seven countries that used hanging as a legal method of execution under civil or military law in the 1990s: Albania*, Angila, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bangladesh* Barbados, Bermuda, Burma, Botswana, Brunei, Burundi, UK, Hungary* Virgin Islands, Gambia, Granada, Guyana, Hong Kong, Dominica, Egypt* Zaire*, Zimbabwe, India*, Iraq*, Iran*, Ireland, Israel, Jordan*, Cayman Islands, Cameroon, Qatar *, Kenya, Kuwait*, Lesotho, Liberia*, Lebanon*, Libya*, Mauritius, Malawi, Malaysia, Montserrat, Namibia, Nepal*, Nigeria*, New Guinea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland* Saint Keith and Nevis, Saint -Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Singapore, Syria*, Slovakia*, Sudan*, Swaziland, Syria*, CIS*, USA* Sierra Leone* Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia*, Turkey, Uganda *, Fiji, Central African Republic, Czech Republic*, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea*, South Africa, South Korea*, Jamaica, Japan.

An asterisk indicates countries where hanging is not the only method of execution and, depending on the nature of the crime and the court that passed the sentence, the convicted are also shot or beheaded.

Hanged. Drawing by Victor Hugo.

According to Benley Purchase, coroner for North London, findings from fifty-eight executions proved that the real cause of death by hanging was separation of the cervical vertebrae, accompanied by rupture or crushing of the spinal cord. All injuries of this kind lead to instant loss of consciousness and brain death. The heart can beat for another fifteen to thirty minutes, but, according to pathologists, “we are talking about purely reflex movements.”

In the United States, one forensic expert who opened the chest of an executed man who had been hanging for half an hour had to stop his heart with his hand, as is done with a “wall clock pendulum.”

The heart was still beating!

Taking all these cases into account, in 1942 the British issued a directive stating that a doctor would pronounce death after the body had been hanging in the noose for at least an hour. In Austria, until 1968, when the death penalty was abolished in the country, this time period was three hours.

In 1951, the archivist of the Royal Society of Surgeons stated that out of thirty-six cases of autopsy of hanged corpses, in ten cases the heart beat seven hours after execution, and in two others - after five hours.

In Argentina, President Carlos Menem announced in 1991 his intention to reintroduce the death penalty into the country's criminal code.

In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori spoke in 1992 in favor of reinstating the death penalty, abolished in 1979, for crimes committed in peacetime.

In Brazil, in 1991, Congress received a proposal to amend the constitution to restore the death penalty for certain crimes.

In Papua New Guinea, the presidential administration reinstated the death penalty for blood crimes and premeditated murder in August 1991, which had been completely abolished in 1974.

The Philippines reintroduced the death penalty in December 1993 for murder, rape, infanticide, hostage-taking and grand corruption crimes. Once upon a time in this country they used the electric chair, but this time they chose the gas chamber.

A famous criminologist once said: “He who has not learned the art of hanging will carry out his work contrary to common sense and subject the unfortunate sinners to torture as long as it is useless.” Let us recall the terrible execution of Mrs. Thomson in 1923, after which the executioner attempted suicide.

But if even the “best” English executioners in the world faced such gloomy vicissitudes, what can we say about the executions that took place in other parts of the world.

In 1946, the executions of Nazi criminals in Germany and Austria, as well as the executions of those sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal, were accompanied by terrible incidents. Even using the modern “long drop” method, the performers more than once had to pull the hanged people by the legs, finishing them off.

In 1981, during a public hanging in Kuwait, the condemned man died from asphyxia for almost ten minutes. The executioner miscalculated the length of the rope, and the height of the fall was not enough to break a cervical vertebra.

In Africa, they often prefer hanging “in English” - with a scaffold and a hatch. However, this method requires some skill. Paris Match's account of the public hanging of four former ministers in Kinshasa in June 1966 reads more like a tale of torture. The convicts were stripped down to their underwear, hoods were put on their heads, and their hands were tied behind their backs. “The rope is pulled tight, the chest of the condemned person is at the level of the scaffold floor. Legs and hips are visible from below. Short spasm. Everything is over". Evariste Kinba died quickly. Emmanuel Bamba was a man of extremely strong build; his cervical vertebrae were not broken. He suffocated slowly, his body resisted to the last. The ribs protruded, all the veins on the body appeared, the diaphragm compressed and unclenched, the spasms stopped only in the seventh minute.

Correspondence table

The heavier the convicted person, the shorter the rope should be. There are many weight/rope correspondence tables. The most commonly used table is the one compiled by executioner James Barry.

Agony 14 minutes long

Alexander Makhomba died almost instantly, and the death of Jerome Anani became the longest, most painful and terrible. The agony lasted fourteen minutes. “He was also hanged very poorly: the rope either slipped at the last second, or was initially poorly secured; in any case, it ended up above the convict’s left ear. For fourteen minutes he spun in all directions, twitched convulsively, beat, his legs shook, bent and unbent, his muscles tensed so much that at some point it seemed that he was about to free himself. Then the amplitude of his jerks sharply decreased, and soon the body became quiet.”

Last meal

The recent publication both outraged US public opinion and provoked a scandal. The article listed the most exquisite and delicious dishes that the condemned ordered before execution. In the American prison "Cummins" one prisoner, who was being taken away for execution, said, pointing to dessert: "I'll finish it when I get back."

Lynching of two black murderers in the USA. Photo. Private count

Public hanging in Syria in 1979 of people accused of spying for Israel. Photo. D.R.

Such a death was considered humiliating

The most popular types of execution in the Middle Ages were beheading and hanging. Moreover, they were applied to people of different classes. Beheading was used as a punishment for noble people, and the gallows was the lot of the rootless poor. So why did the aristocracy beheaded and the common people hanged?

Beheading is for kings and nobles

This type of death penalty has been used everywhere for many millennia. In medieval Europe, such punishment was considered “noble” or “honorable.” Mostly aristocrats were beheaded. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the block, he showed humility.

Beheading with a sword, ax or ax was considered the least painful death. A quick death made it possible to avoid public agony, which was important for representatives of noble families. The crowd, hungry for spectacle, should not have seen the low dying manifestations.

It was also believed that aristocrats, being brave and selfless warriors, were prepared specifically for death from knives.

Much in this matter depended on the skills of the executioner. Therefore, often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money so that he could do his job in one blow.

Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves you from frantic torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned man laid his head on a log, which was supposed to be no more than six inches thick. This greatly simplified the execution.

The aristocratic connotation of this type of punishment was also reflected in books dedicated to the Middle Ages, thereby perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “The History of a Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution - cutting off the head. This is not a hanging, an execution of the mob. Beheading is for kings and nobles.”

Hanging

While nobles were sentenced to beheadings, commoner criminals ended up on the gallows.

Hanging is the most common execution in the world. This type of punishment has been considered shameful since ancient times. And there are several explanations for this. Firstly, it was believed that when hanging, the soul cannot leave the body, as if remaining hostage to it. Such dead people were called “hostages.”

Secondly, dying on the gallows was painful and painful. Death does not occur instantly; a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, fully aware of the approaching end. All his torment and manifestations of agony are observed by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of suffocation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.

For many peoples, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body dangling in plain sight after the execution. Violation by public display is a mandatory part of this type of punishment. Many believed that such a death was the worst thing that could happen, and it was reserved only for traitors. People remembered Judas, who hanged himself from an aspen tree.

A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, pinkie-thick (tortuza), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a “token” or “throw” - it served to throw the condemned to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding onto the crossbars of the gallows and kneeling the condemned man in the stomach.

Exceptions to the rules

Despite the clear distinction between belonging to one class or another, there were exceptions to the established rules. For example, if a noble nobleman raped a girl whom he was entrusted with guardianship, then he was deprived of his nobility and all the privileges associated with the title. If during detention he resisted, then the gallows awaited him.

Among the military, deserters and traitors were sentenced to hanging. For officers, such a death was so humiliating that they often committed suicide without waiting for the execution of the sentence imposed by the court.

The exception was cases of high treason, in which the nobleman was deprived of all privileges and could be executed as a commoner.

The first mention of this type of death penalty, hanging, dates back to the era of antiquity. Thus, as a result of the conspiracy of Catiline (60s BC), five rebels were sentenced to death by hanging by the Roman Senate. This is how the Roman historian Sallust describes their execution:

“There is in the prison, to the left and slightly below the entrance, a room called Tullian’s dungeon; it extends into the ground about twelve feet and is fortified with walls everywhere, and covered with a stone vault on top; dirt, darkness and stench create a vile and terrible impression. It was there that Lentulus was lowered, and the executioners, executing the order, strangled him, throwing a noose around his neck... Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, Ceparius were executed in the same way.”

However, the era of Ancient Rome has long passed, and hanging, as statistics show, despite all its apparent cruelty, is the most popular method of death penalty at present. This type of execution provides for two possible types of death: death from spinal cord rupture and death from asphyxia. Let us consider how dying occurs in each of these cases.

Death from spinal injury

If the calculation was made correctly, the fall will result in severe damage to the cervical spine, as well as the upper parts of the spinal cord and brain stem. Hanging with a long fall in the vast majority of cases is accompanied by the instant death of the victim due to decapitation.

Death from mechanical asphyxia

If, during the fall of the convict's body, there is no displacement of the vertebrae sufficient to rupture the spinal cord, death occurs from slow suffocation (asphyxia) and can last from three to four to seven to eight minutes (for comparison, death from decapitation with a guillotine occurs usually seven to ten seconds after the head is separated from the body).

The process of dying by hanging can be divided into four stages:

• 1. The victim’s consciousness is preserved, deep and frequent breathing is noted with the direct participation of auxiliary muscles in breathing, and cyanosis of the skin quickly appears. The heart rate increases and blood pressure rises.
• 2. Consciousness is lost, convulsions appear, involuntary urination and defecation are possible, breathing becomes rare.
• 3. Terminal stage, which lasts from a few seconds to two to three minutes. Respiratory arrest and cardiac depression occur.
• 4. Agonal state. Following the cessation of breathing, cardiac arrest occurs.

It is worth noting that in the second case the dying process itself lasts longer and is much more painful. Thus, by setting the goal of humanizing the death penalty by hanging, we automatically set the goal of minimizing the number of situations when a convicted person dies from strangulation.

Here are three main ways of placing a noose around the neck: a) - typical (mainly used in the death penalty), b) and c) - atypical.

Practice shows that if the knot is located on the side of the left ear (a typical way of placing a loop), then during the fall the rope throws the head back. This produces enough energy to break the spine.

However, it is not only the danger of incorrect placement of the knot on the neck that awaits the convicted person. The most important and difficult problem when hanging is choosing the length of the rope. Moreover, its length depends more on the weight of the executed person than on his height.

It must be remembered that the hemp rope used in carrying out this type of death penalty is far from the most durable material and tends to break at the most inopportune moment. This is exactly the incident that happened, for example, on July 13 (25), 1826 on Senate Square. Here's how an eyewitness describes the event:

“When everything was ready, with the spring in the scaffold squeezing, the platform on which they stood on the benches fell, and at the same instant three fell - Ryleev, Pestel and Kakhovsky fell down. Ryleev’s cap fell off, and a bloody eyebrow and blood behind his right ear were visible, probably from a bruise. He sat crouched because he had fallen inside the scaffold. I approached him, he said: “What a misfortune!” The Governor-General, seeing that three had fallen, sent adjutant Bashutsky to take other ropes and hang them, which was immediately done. I was so busy with Ryleev that I didn’t pay attention to the others who fell from the gallows and didn’t hear if they said anything. When the board was raised again, Pestel’s rope was so long that he could reach the platform with his toes, which was supposed to prolong his torment, and it was noticeable for some time that he was still alive.”

In order to avoid such trouble during an execution (since it could spoil the image of the executioner by demonstrating his inability to handle the execution instrument), in England, and then in other countries that practiced hanging, it was customary to stretch the rope on the eve of the execution in order to make it more elastic.

In order to calculate the optimal length of the rope, we analyzed the so-called “official fall table” - a reference publication by the UK Home Office on the optimal height from which the body of a person sentenced to death should fall when hanging. In order to then calculate the most suitable length of rope, it was only necessary to add the “fall height” to the height of the bar or hook to which the rope was attached.

The resulting table allows you to calculate the optimal rope length for a convicted person of any weight. In this case, it is only worth remembering that there is an inverse relationship between the weight of the executed person and the height of the fall (the greater the weight, the shorter the length of the rope).

A Korean man living in Japan is sentenced to death by hanging for the murder and rape of two women. The film begins with the execution of a death sentence, but it is not crowned with success: somehow the person sentenced to death survives. Witnesses and executors of the sentence (the Prosecutor, his secretary, representatives of the prison administration, prison employees, a priest and a doctor - in the future I will simply call them “executioners”) begin a long debate about how to determine the future fate of the surviving criminal. Everyone, of course, had different views on this matter. The situation was complicated by the fact that R, who woke up after hanging, completely lost his memory. As a result, the “executioners” came to the conclusion that it was necessary to first restore R’s memory and then hang him again

As you know, in Japan to this day the death penalty exists as the ultimate punishment for especially dangerous criminals. In this film, the director reflects on the topic of whether there is a line between legal execution, which is ordered by the people represented by the state, and illegal murder, which is committed by a criminal. Who should pay for this state-sanctioned murder? What about the possibility that the man who was just hanged did not actually kill anyone? In this case, should the state show the same remorse for the criminal act that a criminal must show before execution?

In addition to the controversial issue of the nature of the death penalty, the director touches on one very pressing problem of post-war Japanese society: the problem of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans (???) an ethnic group of Koreans who immigrated to Japan before 1945 and subsequently became its citizens. Ostensibly restoring R’s memory, the “executioners,” whose idea of ​​Koreans is built on stupid stereotypes, defined R’s childhood as poor and unhappy, because, in their opinion, his family probably had no money, and his father and brothers drank heavily. And in general, R simply had no chance for a happy life, because he is Korean - a representative of a “lower race”. The hatred with which the Japanese treat migrants reminds us of the relationship between those who condemn and those who are condemned. The “executioners” decide that R was driven to murder by his carnal desires, but by reenacting the moments of the murder, the “executioners” themselves reveal their true nature and their own dark fantasies. It turned out that representatives of the law were more obsessed with the ideas of crime than any other criminal. An absurd situation is created when potential criminals are given the power to bring justice to other criminals who have already committed an illegal act.

The unexpected appearance of sister R, who inspires her brother that he was an ardent nationalist, also makes sense to show a certain stereotype that Koreans, due to their own poverty and the anger that arises from this, have no choice but to take revenge on the Japanese (for example, rape and kill them women) and ruin their lives in every possible way.

By criticizing the socio-economic and socio-cultural barriers between people of different nationalities, the director condemns the stupid prejudices that arise in society.

Thus, the director created the greatest picture, which can be characterized as a vicious satire about a society that, without noticing it, creates a favorable atmosphere for crime to flourish, and in some situations itself becomes a murderer, without thinking about the criminality of its own actions.