Techniques perfected by the renowned British hangman Albert Pierrepoint were said to have been studied by the Iraqi executioners. If that is so, then the most prolific British executioner of the 20th century would have been horrified by the decapitation of Barzan al-Tikriti.
Most important was the art of judging the “drop” — the length of rope required to kill the condemned as quickly and painlessly as possible. Too long and the force of the fall would decapitate the prisoner — as happened in Baghdad — too short and it would slowly strangle him.
Mr Pierrepoint carefully recorded the height and weight of those to be executed in a series of log books. The length of drop was calculated using the 1913 Official Government Table of Drops.
During his 25-year career, first as assistant and later chief hangman, he dispatched 433 men and 17 women.
After resigning in 1956 Pierrepoint wrote: “Capital punishment in my view achieved nothing except revenge.”
Is revenge good enough reason?
Capital punishment actually provides two end results; revenge and a kind of terminal deterrence, as the convicted individual will never again commit any crime, ever.
#1, I noticed that the word justice didn’t make it into your post.
1,
And what about the permanent dispatch of those wrongfully accused? Is that a risk worth taking?
2,
Justice is just a word. Always has been, always will be. Kinda like “truth”
The video is pretty funny. Once the head pops off there is an audible “whoops.” Then while the hang man is trying to super glue the head back on he is heard to say, “my bad.” I guess you had to be there.
Now everyone is giving the poor hang man shit. What was he supposed to use a bungi cord? That wouldn’t have been pretty either with these two guys bouncing up and down. Unless of course that they used them as pinatas.
Also, what book? Unless it is in the Koran they probably didn’t read it.
I thought the mid-east was good at chopping off heads, not hangings.
In any case, it can’t take a lot of brains to do a hanging properly. They really need to get this right.
In his book, Pierrepoint gives the following formula for calculating the drop:
1260 ft lbs / weight of prisoner in lbs = drop in feet
and adds, “It was revised in 1913 to include another factor” without saying what that factor was.
I doubt the accused lived long enough to be aware of it. I hate to idea of private executions. If the state is going to take a life make it very public. If the majority of the public is too squsmous to take then, perhaps it shouldn’t be done in their name.
I doubt the accused lived long enough to be aware of it. I hate to idea of private executions. If the state is going to take a life make it very public. If the majority of the public is too civilized to take then, perhaps it shouldn’t be done in their name. Let’s remember these guys weren’t great humanitarians either.
It was gross but I doubt the hangee cared that he lost his head.
And also, while justice is nice, sometimes you have to just settle for revenge.
6, 10,
And then the revenge wheel just keeps turning. An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.
#8, maybe he made a mistake converting that to metric.
Saddam’s experienced executioners are no longer working for the Iraqi government. These guys are just executioners in training. It’ll take a few tries before they get the hang of it.
14,
You forgot to add “Thanks! I’ll be here all night!”
I read Persico’s book last year on the Nuremberg trials. Supposedly we had a good guy from the US to do the hangings but it turned out to be a macabre affair of multiple cases of strangulation and decapitation. You would think they would have gotten it right by 1945 and now 60+ years later? I found it amusing that they did not want to release video of this latest spectacle but had their hand forced since to not show video would imply they purposely damaged the body.
Why is everyone assuming a mistake? Maybe, he read the book, learned from it, and got exactly the desired result.
(…meanwhile, in a gloomy lab in the basement of the Iraqi Dept. of Justice, a determined and frustrated scientist continues to hang volunteers in hopes of discovering the right formula.)
Those who argue pro death penalty should probably do some reading up so they finally can arive in the present as far as morality goes.
As humankind, we’ve been through a couple of chagnes in our ways of sanctioning wrong behaviour. Basically, in the earliest of days it was “you kill one of mine, I kill one of yours” that’s not practiced in many modern societies anymore today. This is not because we’ve become so sophisticated, but merely because a) we don’t want to get our hands dirty and b) we fear revenge. Therefore we’ve invented an arbiter, called “the jaw” (or “the rules”). Along with “the law” came “the judge” who we ask to, well, judge according to the law and decide on who’s right or wrong and what punishment would be appropriate.
This should have taken a bit of the revenge feeling out of the system, but really it has not. Not in all cases. And that’s why capital punishment has survived. It caters to our lowest instincts. It caters to the blood-thirsty “I’ll do to you what you did to me”. I wonder what monster someone has to be to feel better when they see another person being killed.
So in countries with a more modern judicary system, the death penalty has been abolished or at least is not practiced. As Nietzsche wrote, the reason for a punishment should never be revenge. The society has a right, actually the requirement to punish wrongdoers, but a punishment is worth nothing if the offender doesn’t survive it.
Capital punishment is immoral, and, if you are religious, it’s even against most religions. Or is there an extra clause in “thou shalt not kill” that sais “unless you’re executing a death penalty”?
Wonder if Yahve was so forward looking.
pj
#12 An eye for an eye does not leave everyone blind. It leaves 2 people with 1 eye each.
#19 The commandment is not “thou shalt not kill”, the correct translation is “thou shalt not murder”.
#20, I think that would now require some knowledge of the old greek, armenian or hebrew language. In German, it’s translated as “Du sollst nicht töten” which would be “Thou shalt not kill”. I have no access to the original wording, though.
In any case, I’m not religious, so I am not bound by any ancient wording but by my own morality which tells me that killing people is just immoral, for whatever reason.
pj
This is purely an economic decision.
a. Asshat will never be safe to release into society.
b. Housing Asshat in prison for decades costs a small fortune.
c. Annhilating Asshat frees up tons of money.
Hell, even liberals should go for this. Libs would never think of giving the money back to the taxpayer, but think of how many homeless people or underpriviledged people that absolutely can’t make it without a free gov’t handout could be given free handouts from the money saved by nullifying Asshats.
If it were possible to create something like Heinlein’s Coventry, I could see letting the Asshats stay alive as well as they could, since it wouldn’t cost me anything. But in this current world, we shouldn’t be keeping Asshats alive. If nothing else, the money saved could be applied to the “War on Global Warming (TM)”.
#22: and the next thing is to use the economic argument on elderly people and costly operations. Heck, why not? Why put tons of money in a 10 year old car or an 80 year old man?
It’s just economically better to put the same money in younger people.
pj
#20
Murder is the premeditated, cold-blooded termination of a human life
– regardless of whose signature appears on a piece of paper, ostensibly
“authorizing” such a murder.
#20, A very well thought out piece. Thank you for putting it so eloquently.
#21, #19 The commandment is not “thou shalt not kill”, the correct translation is “thou shalt not murder”.
Comment by Mark Stockwell — 1/16/2007 @ 11:33 am
Where would I find the Ten Commandments? Which Book are they in? Which translation / version are you using? And since when does some asshole purporting to have killed millions of people in floods, famines, pestilence, disease, and wars claim the moral authority to tell others not to kill ?!?!?!
26. Dont you remember? Chuck Heston had a hissy fit and smashed the original copy on some rocks when the crazy people were worshipping a golden cow or something like that. So we’re working from memory here.
Justice would be allowing the criminal to die by the same method he/she used to kill the victim, done by the victims family, or not.
I saw a really great idea for a prison in a movie….they built a high security prison under the ice in Anarctica, but the Dragon they released by drilling under the ice kind of screwed that up……and with Global Warming, the damn place will be a tropical paradise in 30 years.
#26:
I’m with you here, but I find it bigotry that a nation that seems to be built on christian fundamentalists is at the same time commiting state sanctioned murder. You have to love the bible for one thing: there’s reasoning for every asshole to be found in it, you just need to look hard enough and read the right bits.
#28:
>Justice would be allowing the criminal to die by the same method >he/she used to kill the victim, done by the victims family, or not.
err… wrong.. this would generally be called “revenge”, not justice.
pj
Have a look at This site the guy explains the meaning of the original Hebrew perfectly. He also explains why, in some cases, it’s not wrong to kill a person (like self defence or the death sentance).
Feel free to disagree with the bible, but in Exodus it clearly states that a murderer should be put to death.
#23 – The difference is that the elderly have already spent their lives contributing in one way or another instead of actively damaging society like pedophiles, serial rapists, megalomaniac dictators, etc.
#30
yes, Exodus was written in the bronze age. Luckily, most of humanity has moved on a little since then and our ideas of morality have changed and evolved. Noone is killed today for worshiping a golden calve as exodus suggests.
pj