Executions: The Rise and Fall of Capital Punishment (2025) Movie Script
1
[dramatic orchestral music]
[dramatic orchestral
music continues]
- [Narrator] Execution
of those convicted
of serious crimes is a form
of punishment that
has been utilized
in almost every nation on earth
since the dawn of civilization.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- It goes back as
long as there's been
life on this planet.
If you did something to me,
I'll do something to you.
- [Narrator] In a world without
modern societal structures
such as criminal courts and
prisons, the Biblical notion
of "an eye for an eye" was
seen as suitable punishment
for a perpetrator, and
compensation for the victim.
As more complex societies
developed, so did the methods
of execution, some designed
to be swift and efficient,
but many others
deliberately crafted
to prolong the experience
as much as possible,
for the dual purpose of
inflicting the maximum amount
of suffering whilst providing
the most gruesome
entertainment to onlookers.
Today, much of the world
has now outlawed
capital punishment.
What was once seen
as "God's will"
and "righteous justice"
now seems cruel
and inhumane to
the eyes of many.
Modern societies like to think
of themselves as more
enlightened than those
of the distant past,
but as we shall see,
it is humanity's recent past
that demonstrates most terribly
how the State's power
to end the lives
of those seen as
criminals can be abused.
[dramatic orchestral music]
The very earliest set
of written laws that still
survives to this day,
known as the Code of Hammurabi,
not only specified which
crimes were capital offenses,
but also the specific manner
in which the convicted criminal
was to be put to death.
Richard Felix is a
Paranormal Historian,
television presenter and author.
- The earliest
record that I know of
is in Babylon, where they
actually created 25 different
offenses that you
could be executed for.
- [Narrator] For burglary,
the convict would be hung
from a gibbet constructed
at the site where
the crime took place.
For rape, bigamy or seduction
of a daughter in law, drowning
was the specified punishment,
and in cases of
incest or looting,
the convict was
to be burnt alive.
In the instance of a man
caught looting from a building
that was on fire, it
was entirely legal
to force him back inside
the burning building
to suffer his fate.
[person screaming]
Even lesser crimes could
result in horrific punishments,
often involving the brutal
severing of a body part.
Ancient methods of
execution were some
of the most torturous
ever devised.
One unusual form of
execution favored
in ancient Greece was
known as Scaphism.
- They actually
put you in a boat,
another boat upside
down on top of you,
put your head hanging
out of the boat,
covered your face
with honey and set you
off out to sea.
- [Narrator] The
horrific results
were described by Greek
philosopher Plutarch:
Ancient Egypt was home to a
sophisticated justice system
of courts and judges.
However, it operated
under the principle
of "guilty until
proved innocent",
and the sentences
could be as barbaric
as any in the ancient world.
Mutilation and flogging
were common punishments
for minor offenses,
and for capital crimes,
execution could be
carried out by beheading,
being buried alive,
drowned, impaled,
or even being fed to crocodiles.
In South East Asian
territories, "slow slicing",
otherwise known as "death
by a thousand cuts",
was a punishment for the
most serious offenses.
- You were literally
stripped naked,
tied to a post, and then pieces
of your flesh were cut away.
They even had a set of knives
with labels on that they
would just pick at random,
so if that one said tongue,
then out came your tongue.
If that one said breast,
then off came the breast.
And they continued
for hours and hours,
cutting small pieces of flesh,
and then the last
one, the coup de grace
of course, was the
dagger that said heart,
and that was plunged
into the heart to kill.
Families of the
person that was going
to be executed would sometimes
bribe the executioner,
so that he made sure
that he picked the
heart knife first."
- [Narrator] In
other parts of Asia,
crushing or
dismembering by elephant
was a preferred
method of execution.
The ability to control a large
animal such as an elephant
was a significant demonstration
of power and authority.
- They would train an elephant
of course, to, not to
necessarily stand straight
on the heart, but
crush other parts
of the body first.
Which is again, a
long, slow death.
- [Narrator] The
impressive spectacle
of such an act was considered
a powerful deterrent,
so much so that the
practice continued
until comparatively
modern times,
and was described in the Kingdom
of Siam by Scottish sea
captain Alexander Hamilton.
[bones crunching]
[person screaming]
One of the more conventional,
and certainly the
most well-known,
methods of capital
punishment used
in the ancient world
was crucifixion.
Whilst most commonly associated
with the death of Jesus Christ,
the use of crucifixion as
both a criminal punishment
and as a method for disposing
of vanquished enemies
can be dated back
to many centuries before
the time of Jesus.
Alexander the Great, king
of the ancient Greek kingdom
of Macedon, is said to have
crucified 2,000 survivors
from his siege of
the Phoenician city
of Tyre in 332 BC.
By the time of the Roman Empire,
crucifixion was commonly
used as a punishment
for capital crimes.
- Thousands and
thousands of people
were crucified by the Romans.
- [Narrator] Whilst
the depiction
of Jesus nailed upon
the cross is to much
of the world an indelible image
and one which epitomizes
the act of crucifixion,
in fact the Romans carried
out many types of crucifixion.
- Sometimes they
crucified you upside down.
Which of course was
actually more humane,
because you would die
quicker of unconsciousness.
- [Narrator] Roman
philosopher Seneca the Young
once observed:
The original Latin word
that today we translate
as crucifixion actually
applied to many different forms
of painful execution, including
being impaled on a stake,
or affixed to a
tree, an upright pole
and of course, an upright pole
with a cross beam as
popularly depicted today.
As the Roman soldiers
guarding the execution site
could not leave until
death had occurred,
they were sometime tempted
to help things along.
[thunder crashing]
- The guards stayed with
you for the whole time,
because you would last for days.
But sometimes, the guards would
actually finish you quicker,
as they reckon
they did with Jesus
of course, with the spear.
- [Narrator] In other cases,
however, the person was
often deliberately
kept alive as long
as possible to prolong
their suffering
and humiliation.
In the case of a
slave being convicted
of killing their master,
all of the victim's
slaves would be crucified,
a practice which
sometimes involved dozens
or even hundreds of innocent
people being executed.
When Roman senator
Lucius Secundus was
murdered by a slave,
some in the Senate tried to
prevent the mass crucifixion
of 400 of his slaves,
but in the end
tradition prevailed
and every single
one was executed.
Such cruelty was not without
controversy even at the time,
celebrated Roman philosopher
Cicero described it
as a "most cruel and
disgusting punishment".
He famously wrote:
[dramatic orchestral music]
Over the centuries,
as empires fell
and nations warred,
methods of torture
and execution became ever
more cruel and imaginative.
In Europe during
the Middle Ages,
the death penalty was
commonly used a punishment
even for minor offenses.
Execution by breaking
the body over a wheel
was a technique first
explored by the Romans.
However, use of the
"breaking wheel"
as it was to become known,
was popularized as a form
of public execution
throughout much
of Europe during
the Middle Ages.
- I think the most inhumane form
of execution is
breaking on the wheel.
You were taken to the
execution on a cart,
but on the way the
executioner had a brazier
of coals and a pair of pincers,
and they would rip
flesh from your body
before you even got
to the execution.
They would then pour
either boiling oil
or sulfur, sometimes boiling
lead, into the wound.
They would then strap you
to a wheel and break you,
and that's smashing your bones,
starting with the ankle, the
shin, the knee, the thigh.
Then the same with the next leg.
Then one arm, the wrist, the
shoulder, then the next arm.
This could take as long
as the executioner
wanted to take it.
And then the coup de grace
would be a blow to the chest.
This was either done
with a metal bar or
sometimes a sledgehammer.
- [Narrator] Once this
torture was complete,
the convict would then
be tied to the wheel
which was then
raised up on a pole
or mast, ready for a slow
and agonizing death not
unlike a crucifixion.
- Eventually the body was burned
and your ashes
scattered to the wind.
- [Narrator] The
fear of witchcraft
that spread throughout Europe
and early American settlers
proved another source
of victims for those that
delighted in the most cruel
of punishments.
Between 1400 and 1775,
approximately 100,000 people
were tried and prosecuted
for witchcraft in Europe
and the American colonies.
Around half of
these were executed.
- You had to prove
they were a witch,
which was a bit difficult.
So they were stripped naked to
search for the devil's mark,
a birthmark, a wart.
If none of those things
happened then it was up
to God to decide,
trial by ordeal.
They tied your left toe
to your right thumb,
your left thumb to your
right toe, rope round you
and threw you in the pond.
If you sank to the
bottom you were innocent.
If you rose to the surface,
as most people did,
you were a witch.
Under a law of Queen Elizabeth,
witchcraft was a criminal
offense, a hanging offense.
- [Narrator] The
most common form
of execution for those convicted
of witchcraft was to
be burned at the stake,
where the condemned was
tied to a large wooden stake
and a fire lit under them,
resulting in a protracted
and agonizing death.
- Sometimes the executioner
would tie a rope around
the neck and pull on the rope
and strangle them as the
flames were getting higher,
but often they
were burned alive.
- [Narrator] In some
cases, as small act
of mercy, a container of
gunpowder was attached
to the victim, which
would explode once heated
by the fire, killing
them instantly.
[person screaming]
There is just one European
leader who is remembered
to this day more for
his preferred manner
of execution than for
any other achievement.
Vlad Dracula, better
known as Vlad The Impaler,
ruled Romania during the
15th century, and stories
of his immense
cruelty circulated far
and wide, both during his life
and after his death in 1476.
With the invention of
the printing press,
books detailing his exploits,
together with lurid drawings,
were best sellers of the time.
He was, of course, best known
for sentencing his
enemies to impalement.
- That's a spiked wooden
pole that was greased
and then placed in any aperture
that they could find,
usually the anus.
They would hoist them onto it
and then leave them there
as they slipped down the
pole until it came out
of all different parts
of the body, sometimes
even the mouth.
This was a vile, disgusting
form of execution.
It was said that even
after his eventual defeat
and imprisonment, Vlad
took to capturing rats
in his prison cell
and impaling them
on scraps of wood.
To be hanged,
drawn and quartered
was possibly the
bloodiest method
of execution carried
out in Britain
and Ireland during
the Middle Ages.
- The whole thing was symbolic.
It was a form of torture,
even though torture
was illegal in England,
but it was to make you suffer
and it was to send you to hell.
- [Narrator] Possibly the
most gruesome punishment
ever devised, it was reserved
for those found guilty
of high treason.
- The sentence for a traitor was
that you be taken from this jail
and dragged backwards
to a place of execution.
Backwards because
what you'd thought up,
treason, was unnatural.
There you will be
hanged between heaven
and earth, not fit
to inhabit either.
We are talking of
slow strangulation,
so after two or three minutes
you would still be alive.
You'd be taken down,
laid on the drawing,
quartering and beheading block,
which is a butcher's
block for human beings,
your privy parts cut off
and burned before your eyes.
Your bowels and entrails
to be ripped out
of your belly because of the
inward treacherous thoughts
that you'd had.
Treason.
A good executioner could
get you disemboweled,
all 37 feet, small intestine,
while you're still
alive and conscious.
[people shouting]
Your head to be
severed from your body
because your head had thought
up the treacherous thoughts,
and your body divided
into four equal quarters,
and those quarters
to be at the disposal
of whatever monarch was
on the throne at the time.
- [Narrator] All of this
would take place in public,
before a baying
crowd, and in the case
of multiple executions,
convicts would be forced
to watch the disembowelment
of their fellow inmates
before it was done to them.
Finally, the
convict was beheaded
and put on display as a
gruesome warning to others.
In some cases, the head
would be pickled in a jar
in an attempt to ensure the
face remained recognizable.
Although this most extreme form
of punishment was
not used routinely,
and was reserved only for cases
of high treason, there
are many examples
of its use that are still
remembered to this day,
such as the execution
of Scottish knight
Sir William Wallace.
- When William Wallace was
hanged, drawn and quartered,
his quarters were taken
to different parts
of the country
and the reason was that
if the body wasn't whole,
then on the day of
judgment you'd go to hell.
- [Narrator] Members of the
English nobility convicted
of wrongdoing faced a
punishment more in keeping
with their status in society.
- Beheading was
reserved was kings
and queens and aristocrats.
- [Narrator] However,
no matter the status
of the convict, the
executioner himself
may not always have
been up to the task.
- You've got an executioner
that's probably taken
from the condemned cell
and asked to become
an executioner.
He's the lowest of the low,
and he's got to chop
the king's head off,
the queen's head off,
lord so and so's head off.
Now, he would
nervous, and of course
there's one very good way
of calming your nerves
down before and execution,
and that's alcohol.
So the chances of
taking a head off
in one blow was very remote.
It took three blows to take
off the head of Mary
Queen of Scotts,
and five blows to take off the
head of the Duke of Monmouth.
After the fourth blow
the body was still moving
and Monmouth was still alive.
- [Narrator] In order
to avoid such suffering,
it was customary for
the condemned person
to pay their executioner a tip,
the more generous the
payment, it was hoped,
the swifter the death would be.
- Laurence Shirley,
the 4th Earl Ferrers,
who'd murdered his bailiff,
when he gave his purse
of gold or silver, he handed it
to the assistant executioner
instead of the executioner,
and there was a punch
up on the scaffold.
- [Narrator] Across
the Channel in France,
beheading was seen as much more
of a skilled profession.
- In France they
did it with a sword,
and you had to kneel down
with your neck up and the
executioner would swing
and take the head off like that.
- [Narrator] One of the most
celebrated French executioners
was Charles Henri Sanson.
Sanson was the Royal
Executioner during the reign
of King Louis the XVI,
and was the fourth
in a six-generation family
dynasty of executioners.
- The Sanson family,
there were seven members
of the Sanson family
all became executioners.
It was passed down from,
sometimes from father to son,
from uncle to nephew.
- [Narrator] During
his lifetime,
Sanson personally executed
almost 3000 people.
On one occasion,
he was called upon
to execute a young nobleman
for the crime of blasphemy.
- He was a young man,
and you obviously had to kneel.
And Sanson said,
"Sir, will you kneel?"
and he said, "I am an
aristocrat, I will not kneel."
And he remained standing.
Sanson took one blow and went
straight through the neck.
The body continued to stand
with the head still on the neck.
Sanson looked at him and said
"Shake yourself, it's done."
And then the head rolled off
and the body crumpled
onto the floor.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- [Narrator] In
the 18th century,
the idea that the condemned
man should be forced to suffer
as much as possible
began to be replaced
by a drive for sheer efficiency.
- When the French
Revolution came,
a very famous executioner
called Henri Sanson,
who beheaded people
with a sword,
realized that if he was going
to have to execute all these
clerics, religious people,
aristocrats, he'd
need a lot of swords.
Luckily a gentleman of
the national assembly,
Dr. Ignatius Guillotine,
came up with a,
what he believed
to be a humane form
of execution, the guillotine.
- [Narrator] The
guillotine was praised
for its efficiency, an
efficiency that allowed
for an astonishing
17,000 executions
to take place in the course of
just one Revolutionary year.
[metal creaking]
[flesh squelching]
[crowd shouting]
- When they originally
designed it,
it had a crescent shaped blade,
and that wasn't efficient enough
because that actually
crushed the neck
before it took the head off,
and, would you believe,
Louis the XVI, he was a bit
of an engineer, and he had
a look at the guillotine
when it was first being made
and realized that it
would be far better
to have a blade at an
angle of 45 degrees,
which would slice
through the neck quickly.
He was one of the first people
executed on the guillotine.
- [Narrator] There is
some evidence to suggest
that death by guillotine
may not be as quick
and painless as may appear.
- There was a lot of discussion
and debate about whether
the brain continued
to function after the
head had been taken off.
In 1905, a Dr.
Beaurieux got permission
to stand by the guillotine
when a chap called
Languille was beheaded.
- The doctor waited
a few seconds,
then shouted "Languille!"
Though it remains most
famous as a device connected
to the French Revolution
and the 1700's, the
guillotine remained
as the official method
of execution in France
well into modern times and
was still in use in the 1970s.
In England in the year 1810,
Sir Samuel Romilly stated
in the British Parliament
that there was:
Over the course of the next
century this was to change,
with vast numbers of
minor crimes being
removed from the list
of capital offenses.
Public executions
ceased in 1868,
not because the public appetite
for them had diminished,
but because many influential
figures at the time
saw that they had become little
more than an entertainment,
often accompanied by
the selling of alcohol.
Charles Dickens
wrote in a letter
to The Times newspaper:
- It would be like
a day at the fair.
There'd be pie sellers,
people selling a program
of your trial and
life to read about you
as you were dangling
at the end of a rope.
There'd be pickpockets there,
riots, people would be drunk.
It came from higher up,
this was too popular,
we must stop it.
- [Narrator] With the
end of public executions,
the need for especially cruel
and gruesome punishments
was also at an end.
Death by beheading
and quartering
was officially
abolished in 1870,
all executions for the rest
of the 19th century were to
be carried out by hanging.
- In each town there
would be a county gallows,
which would be a football goal,
and then there would be one
ladder, sometimes two ladders.
You would go up one ladder,
the rope would be
fixed round your neck,
the executioner would be up
the other ladder, fixing it.
He'd come down, and then
he would turn you off,
as it was called, turning
you off the ladder,
and you died of
slow strangulation.
- [Narrator] Before
1850, the short drop
was the standard
method of hanging.
Thanks to the work of Irish
doctor Samuel Haughton,
the short drop was
superseded in the second half
of the century by
what came to be known
as the standard drop.
- It was a platform with
a lever and a trapdoor.
When the trapdoor opened
and you dropped through, it
would sever between the second
and third vertebrae,
bringing about hopefully
an instantaneous death.
- [Narrator] However, the
standard drop was no guarantee
of a quick death.
Famous examples of the failure
of this technique
include the execution
of convicted US civil
war criminal Henry Wirz.
Wirz was hanged in
November of 1865,
watched by a crowd
of spectators,
but the drop failed
to break his neck.
Spectators were forced
to watch as Wirz
was slowly strangled over
the course of 20 minutes.
The standard drop
was later superseded
by the long drop, developed
by William Marwood,
himself a practicing
executioner.
The exact height of the drop
varied depending on the height
of the convict, from
as little as four feet
to as much as eight feet.
- William Marwood,
clever as he was,
at the beginning he only
measured the victim,
he didn't weigh them.
So a man of five foot seven
and 12 stone got the same drop
of a man of five foot
seven and 20 stone.
- [Narrator] The danger with
using the long drop technique
was that if there
was a miscalculation,
the results could be horrific.
American outlaw Tom Ketchum,
known by the nickname
Black Jack, was executed
for train robbery using the
long drop technique in 1901.
Ketchum's weight was measured
when he was taken into custody,
but was not remeasured
prior to his execution,
despite significant weight
gain during his time in jail.
The extra weight was
therefore not taken
into account when the
drop was calculated
for his execution.
As Ketchum dropped with
the noose around his neck,
the force was so
violent that his head
was torn from his spine,
an image that was captured
by a photographer.
This and other such incidents
caused many United
States authorities
to look at alternative
methods of execution.
The electric chair, which
was to become synonymous
with executions in
the United States,
was first conceptualized
by a New York dentist
in 1881 to be a more humane form
of death than hanging.
The initial design took the form
of a custom-built wooden chair
with electrodes that attached
to the victim's head and leg.
After a variety of
tests on animals,
authorities and
experts remained unsure
as to the precise current
of electricity that was required
to bring about instant death.
The first official
execution by electric chair,
was, perhaps unsurprisingly,
a gruesome affair.
William Francis
Kemmler was convicted
of killing his common-law
wife Tillie Zeigler in 1889,
and his execution
was to be carried out
by electric chair on
the 6th of August, 1890.
Kemmler's last words
as he was placed
in the chair were:
The generator attached
to the chair was charged
with 1000 volts, which
was thought to be enough
to induce immediate
unconsciousness
and cardiac arrest.
This current was applied
to Kemmler for 17 seconds,
after which he was
pronounced dead.
However, witnesses pointed out
that he was still breathing.
Kemmler was quickly
examined by two physicians
who confirmed he
was still alive,
and the call was
made for the current
to be switched back on.
This time, 2000
volts were applied.
Blood vessels under Kemmler's
skin ruptured and bled,
and some witnesses claimed
his body caught fire.
A reporter for the New
York Times later wrote:
When it was finally
over, the execution
had lasted for eight minutes
and was widely considered
to have been far more cruel
and unpleasant than
the use of hanging.
- The electric chair,
not humane at all.
In my opinion an
extremely inhumane form
of execution that I still
believe is being done
in America in some
states to this day.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- [Narrator] Whilst often
cruel and merciless,
institutions throughout history
that have wielded the power
to legally take the life
of a human being have
done so either in times
of war or in response
to capital crimes
such as rape and murder.
But when a government
decides to take control
of the justice system
and use it for political ends,
simply holding the wrong opinion
or even just being
in the wrong place
at the wrong time can
result in imprisonment,
torture and execution.
"The Iron Curtain",
a term first used
by Sir Winston Churchill in
1946, referred to the area
of Russia and Eastern Europe
that came under
Communist Soviet control
after the Second World War.
The Soviets came to power in
Russia in 1917 in the midst
of a workers' revolt
and a violent coup
against the Russian monarchy.
In the century prior
to the revolution,
approximately 6000 death
sentences were handed down
due to a person's political
beliefs or activities,
and so during the Second
All Russian Congress
of Soviets of Workers'
and Soldiers' Deputies,
the new Soviet government
decreed the abolition
of the death penalty.
However, it was quickly
reinstated just a
few months later,
and by the end of the following
year the Soviet Regime
had already executed
more than 15,000 people
and they were just
getting started.
During the 1920s, the
Russian secret police
were actually issued
with quotas to determine how
many people were to be arrested
and executed, regardless of
any actual criminal activity.
- We are talking of hundreds
of thousands of people.
Stalin, I mean, had
the Polish aristocracy
and officer class
completely obliterated.
- [Narrator] During
Stalin's "Great Purge"
of the 1930s, 720,000
people were executed,
often after highly
publicized show trials
at which they were
forced to confess
to various political crimes.
In fact, the confessions
came only after weeks
of torture, including beatings
and simulated drowning.
By comparison, the method
of execution employed,
a gunshot to the head,
was at least less cruel
than under many earlier regimes.
However, the Soviets
had other ways
of ensuring the death
of their enemies.
By the time of
Stalin's death in 1953,
approximately five
million people per year
were being sentenced
to the gulag,
a series of forced labor camps,
where a slow death from cold,
over-work, torture or starvation
was often the outcome.
Many more millions were
starved as a result
of deliberately
engineered food shortages
and famines, bypassing the
justice system altogether.
By the time of the
eventual collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1989,
it is now known that tens
of millions had been put
to death by the regime,
a figure that is only matched
by equally horrific rule
of Chairman Mao
Ze Dong in China.
After a period of civil war,
the formation of the
People's Republic
of China was announced
by Mao Ze Dong on the 1st
of October, 1949.
Having received considerable
support in the year prior
from the Soviet Union,
Mao adopted a Soviet style
approach to leadership.
As in the Soviet Union,
show trials took place
at which convicts were
publicly denounced
before being taken away
for execution by way
of a bullet to the
back of the head.
[gun firing]
However, such was the political
fervor at these trials,
tensions sometimes ran so
high that the condemned person
was beaten to death
by an angry mob
before the formal execution
could be carried out.
Mao Ze Dong was himself a
fervent believer in the use
of capital punishment
against political opponents.
Indeed, unlike in virtually
every other society in history,
it was political crimes,
and only political crimes,
that Mao considered worthy
of the death penalty.
The rule of law itself
was effectively suspending
during the Cultural
Revolution, wherein people
were encouraged to attack
and destroy any remnants
of the old,
Pre-Revolutionary China.
- Hundreds of thousands
of people have
been exterminated.
- [Narrator] Whilst
the thousands
of deaths may not have been
recorded as official executions,
the use of such violence
was explicitly encouraged,
most famously by the publication
of Mao's "Little Red Book",
a collection of quotes
from Mao Ze Dong.
People were killed en
mass at political rallies,
and as in the Soviet
Union, forced labor camps
and engineered food shortages
caused many more
millions of deaths.
This period in China's
history has proved
to be the deadliest of
anywhere in the world,
with an estimated
65 million people
having lost their lives through
the action of the regime.
But perhaps the
most horrific abuse
of the power of
the state over life
and death was seen in Cambodia,
where the Communist revolution
led by Pol Pot
resulted in one quarter
of the entire population
being put to death.
Pol Pot, who was introduced
to Communist theory
while studying in
France, took control
of Cambodia in 1976
and immediately began
brutalizing the population
with his Khmer Rouge army.
[guns firing]
- Pol Pot, in Cambodia,
he created this idea
of doing away with
industrialization completely.
- [Narrator] The country's
cities were forcibly evacuated,
with the stated intent
of creating a new, agrarian
society in the countryside.
But the result was
two million deaths.
The Khmer Rouge regime executed
anyone whom it suspected
of having connections with the
former Cambodian government,
as well as professionals,
intellectuals,
Buddhists and other minorities.
- Just wearing a pair of glasses
could cause you to be executed,
because they thought
you might have been
a more intelligent person.
- [Narrator] It was also
considered necessary
to execute not only the
suspected dissident,
but often their
entire family as well.
Pol Pot himself said,
Whilst the Khmer
Rouge initially sought
to imitate their
Soviet predecessors
by carrying out
executions via a gunshot
to the back of the head,
the relative poverty
of Cambodia as a nation
meant that they simply
could not afford the cost
of the bullets
required to do so.
Those intended to
be put to death
were therefore simply struck
on the back of the head
and thrown into shallow
ditches in remote areas
known as the Killing Fields.
Even small children and
babies were not spared,
and were smashed against trees
before being thrown
into the mass graves.
Many prisoners were also
subjected to hideous torture
and medical experiments,
which were so horrific
that the prisoners tried in
every way to commit suicide.
The screams were said to
be so loud that they had
to be covered by loudspeakers
playing propaganda music
of the Khmer Rouge.
Today, the site of the
most notorious prison
has been turned into a
museum, where it is recorded
that more than 20,000
people had been tortured
and imprisoned there.
This was just one of
almost 200 similar prisons
that existed
throughout the country.
- More like ethnic cleansing,
I think, than execution.
We are talking of hundreds
of thousands of people.
- [Narrator] By the end
of the 20th Century,
it's widely believed that
the Communist regimes
in power in the Soviet Union
and elsewhere, had together
been responsible for the deaths
of over 100 million people.
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As the 20th century progressed,
more and more voices in
the Western world began
to question the legitimacy
of capital punishment.
Over the course of numerous
individual acts of Parliament,
laws in the United
Kingdom gradually changed.
Whilst the public
overwhelmingly supported the use
of the death penalty
in cases of murder,
a number of miscarriages
of justice during the 1950s
strengthened the
case for abolition.
The Homicide Act of 1957
attempted to create
two different
classifications of murder,
those which were capital crimes,
and those which were not.
Capital punishment for murder
was finally abolished
completely by an Act
of Parliament in 1965.
- When we abolished
hanging in 1965,
some people were against hanging
and some people
were for hanging,
but the interesting
thing is that from 1965
until 2001 the amount of murders
that took place in
this country doubled.
- [Narrator] Capital
punishment did remain
for a small number of
very specific crimes:
Surprisingly, until 1973
the official punishment
for the crime of treason
was death by beheading,
although this was never
actually carried out.
All remaining capital
offenses, including treason,
were finally removed from
law in the late 1990's
by the Tony Blair government,
bringing the UK into alignment
with much of Europe.
As of the present day,
capital punishment is banned
in all members of
the European Union.
Whilst Russia retains
capital crimes in law,
no executions have taken
place there since the 1990s.
In all of Europe,
only Belarus actively
retains the death penalty,
where it is carried
out by shooting.
Even in the United
States of America,
the death penalty
today is seldom used,
with the number of executions
per year having reduced
from 85 in the year 2000 to
just 24 in the year 2023.
The vast majority of
these were carried out
by lethal injection.
The idea of using an injection
of lethal chemicals to
cause an immediate death
was first proposed
in the late 1800s
by New York doctor
Julius Mount Bleyer,
writing in the
Medico-Legal Journal.
However, lethal
injection as a method
of execution was not
adopted in law until 1977.
Despite the straightforward
sounding name,
death by lethal injection is
a relatively complex process.
- One of the problems
is, of course,
is 'cause a doctor can't do it,
because they'll be breaking
the Hippocratic Oath,
so it's left to some form
of prison official to do it,
and an awful lot of those
that are executed in
America these days
of course are taking
drugs intravenously,
and they can't find a vein.
And even, sometimes,
the condemned man
is actually helping the prison
official to find a vein.
- [Narrator] The process begins
with the condemned person
having two intravenous cannulas
inserted, one in each arm.
A saline drip is then
started in both arms
to ensure that the
lines are not blocked,
and a heart monitor is
attached to the inmate.
The lethal chemicals
are then added to the IV
in a specific order to first
induce unconsciousness followed
by death through paralysis
of the respiratory muscles
or by cardiac arrest.
The chemical combination used
begins with Sodium Piothentol,
which normally causes
unconsciousness
within 30 seconds.
This is followed by
Pancuronium Bromide,
a muscle relaxant
which causes paralysis
of the diaphragm, sufficient
to cause death by asphyxiation.
Finally, Potassium
Chloride to stop the heart,
resulting in death
by cardiac arrest.
This normally occurs
within minutes,
though there have
been recorded cases
where the entire process
took more than an hour.
- I don't understand why
they have such a problem,
because when your
animal is put to sleep
they give it an injection
and it goes to sleep,
and then they give an
injection that kills it.
But for some reason
they never seem, well,
sometimes don't seem to
get the mixture right.
- [Narrator] Some opponents
to the technique point out
that once the muscle relaxant
has been administered,
there is no way to tell
if the initial dose
of Sodium Piothentol
has actually
fully induced unconsciousness.
Since the muscle relaxant
causes paralysis,
it may be that the
inmate suffers great pain
during the administering
of Potassium Chloride,
but is simply unable to
express their discomfort.
In other parts of the
world, capital punishment
is still very much
on the agenda.
In the Islamic world, the Quran
specifies the death penalty
for a large number of crimes.
An Amnesty International report
from 2020 calculated
that almost 90%
of all the world's executions
took place in either Iran,
Iraq, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Death by decapitation
is the form
of execution most
associated with Islamic law,
although surprisingly it is
not explicitly called for
in the Quran, although some
scholars site a reference
to "smiting the
necks" of enemies.
Currently, Saudi Arabia
is the only country
in the world which
uses decapitation
within its Islamic legal system.
The majority of
executions carried out
by the Wahhabi government
are public beheadings,
which usually draw large crowds
but are not allowed to be
photographed or filmed.
Outside of the Islamic
world, the largest number
of executions carried out today
by a single nation take place
in the People's
Republic of China.
Unlike the chaos of the Mao era,
modern China has a
rigorous justice system.
Whilst some political crimes
remain capital offenses,
added to the list are
more typical crimes
including arson, rape of a
minor and drug trafficking.
Capital punishment in
China can be imposed
on crimes against
national symbols
and treasures, such as
theft of cultural relics
and even the killing
of giant pandas.
Elsewhere in South East Asia,
capital punishment
remains in use,
particularly for
drugs-related offenses,
in Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam.
Japan retains the death
penalty for aggravated murder
and utilizes the long
drop method of hanging.
Despite its abolition
many decades ago,
popular opinion in Europe
remains generally in favor
of capital punishment, although
only by a small margin.
- I think the last poll
they had, I believe 59%
of the population of this
country believe that some form
of death penalty
should be reintroduced.
- [Narrator] Those in favor
of its reintroduction normally
refer to the fact that fear
of execution acts as the
strongest possible deterrent.
Perhaps the most emotional
argument in favor
of the death penalty,
particularly in cases
of murder, is that the
perpetrator simply deserves
such a punishment, "an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth"
as the famous
Biblical quote has it.
As we have seen,
the justice systems
of many ancient
societies were founded
on exactly this basis,
and in all of human history,
the move towards abolishing
the death penalty in much
of world represents a
tiny fragment of time.
It was only a few
short decades ago,
within the lifetime of many
people still alive today,
that millions of people
were being executed
by regimes that some
in the West praised
and still defend today.
- I personally
believe that some form
of death sentence should be
administered for the murder
of children, murder of policemen
and premeditated murder.
You bought the
gun, you loaded it
with six bullets and you
pulled the trigger five times.
You meant to do it.
- [Narrator] Could it be
that capital punishment
will make a return
to Western Europe?
In light of the
growing discontent
with the apparent acquiescence
to lawlessness
currently being felt
in many European capitals,
it may be a question
not of if, but of when.
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music continues]
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music continues]
- [Narrator] Execution
of those convicted
of serious crimes is a form
of punishment that
has been utilized
in almost every nation on earth
since the dawn of civilization.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- It goes back as
long as there's been
life on this planet.
If you did something to me,
I'll do something to you.
- [Narrator] In a world without
modern societal structures
such as criminal courts and
prisons, the Biblical notion
of "an eye for an eye" was
seen as suitable punishment
for a perpetrator, and
compensation for the victim.
As more complex societies
developed, so did the methods
of execution, some designed
to be swift and efficient,
but many others
deliberately crafted
to prolong the experience
as much as possible,
for the dual purpose of
inflicting the maximum amount
of suffering whilst providing
the most gruesome
entertainment to onlookers.
Today, much of the world
has now outlawed
capital punishment.
What was once seen
as "God's will"
and "righteous justice"
now seems cruel
and inhumane to
the eyes of many.
Modern societies like to think
of themselves as more
enlightened than those
of the distant past,
but as we shall see,
it is humanity's recent past
that demonstrates most terribly
how the State's power
to end the lives
of those seen as
criminals can be abused.
[dramatic orchestral music]
The very earliest set
of written laws that still
survives to this day,
known as the Code of Hammurabi,
not only specified which
crimes were capital offenses,
but also the specific manner
in which the convicted criminal
was to be put to death.
Richard Felix is a
Paranormal Historian,
television presenter and author.
- The earliest
record that I know of
is in Babylon, where they
actually created 25 different
offenses that you
could be executed for.
- [Narrator] For burglary,
the convict would be hung
from a gibbet constructed
at the site where
the crime took place.
For rape, bigamy or seduction
of a daughter in law, drowning
was the specified punishment,
and in cases of
incest or looting,
the convict was
to be burnt alive.
In the instance of a man
caught looting from a building
that was on fire, it
was entirely legal
to force him back inside
the burning building
to suffer his fate.
[person screaming]
Even lesser crimes could
result in horrific punishments,
often involving the brutal
severing of a body part.
Ancient methods of
execution were some
of the most torturous
ever devised.
One unusual form of
execution favored
in ancient Greece was
known as Scaphism.
- They actually
put you in a boat,
another boat upside
down on top of you,
put your head hanging
out of the boat,
covered your face
with honey and set you
off out to sea.
- [Narrator] The
horrific results
were described by Greek
philosopher Plutarch:
Ancient Egypt was home to a
sophisticated justice system
of courts and judges.
However, it operated
under the principle
of "guilty until
proved innocent",
and the sentences
could be as barbaric
as any in the ancient world.
Mutilation and flogging
were common punishments
for minor offenses,
and for capital crimes,
execution could be
carried out by beheading,
being buried alive,
drowned, impaled,
or even being fed to crocodiles.
In South East Asian
territories, "slow slicing",
otherwise known as "death
by a thousand cuts",
was a punishment for the
most serious offenses.
- You were literally
stripped naked,
tied to a post, and then pieces
of your flesh were cut away.
They even had a set of knives
with labels on that they
would just pick at random,
so if that one said tongue,
then out came your tongue.
If that one said breast,
then off came the breast.
And they continued
for hours and hours,
cutting small pieces of flesh,
and then the last
one, the coup de grace
of course, was the
dagger that said heart,
and that was plunged
into the heart to kill.
Families of the
person that was going
to be executed would sometimes
bribe the executioner,
so that he made sure
that he picked the
heart knife first."
- [Narrator] In
other parts of Asia,
crushing or
dismembering by elephant
was a preferred
method of execution.
The ability to control a large
animal such as an elephant
was a significant demonstration
of power and authority.
- They would train an elephant
of course, to, not to
necessarily stand straight
on the heart, but
crush other parts
of the body first.
Which is again, a
long, slow death.
- [Narrator] The
impressive spectacle
of such an act was considered
a powerful deterrent,
so much so that the
practice continued
until comparatively
modern times,
and was described in the Kingdom
of Siam by Scottish sea
captain Alexander Hamilton.
[bones crunching]
[person screaming]
One of the more conventional,
and certainly the
most well-known,
methods of capital
punishment used
in the ancient world
was crucifixion.
Whilst most commonly associated
with the death of Jesus Christ,
the use of crucifixion as
both a criminal punishment
and as a method for disposing
of vanquished enemies
can be dated back
to many centuries before
the time of Jesus.
Alexander the Great, king
of the ancient Greek kingdom
of Macedon, is said to have
crucified 2,000 survivors
from his siege of
the Phoenician city
of Tyre in 332 BC.
By the time of the Roman Empire,
crucifixion was commonly
used as a punishment
for capital crimes.
- Thousands and
thousands of people
were crucified by the Romans.
- [Narrator] Whilst
the depiction
of Jesus nailed upon
the cross is to much
of the world an indelible image
and one which epitomizes
the act of crucifixion,
in fact the Romans carried
out many types of crucifixion.
- Sometimes they
crucified you upside down.
Which of course was
actually more humane,
because you would die
quicker of unconsciousness.
- [Narrator] Roman
philosopher Seneca the Young
once observed:
The original Latin word
that today we translate
as crucifixion actually
applied to many different forms
of painful execution, including
being impaled on a stake,
or affixed to a
tree, an upright pole
and of course, an upright pole
with a cross beam as
popularly depicted today.
As the Roman soldiers
guarding the execution site
could not leave until
death had occurred,
they were sometime tempted
to help things along.
[thunder crashing]
- The guards stayed with
you for the whole time,
because you would last for days.
But sometimes, the guards would
actually finish you quicker,
as they reckon
they did with Jesus
of course, with the spear.
- [Narrator] In other cases,
however, the person was
often deliberately
kept alive as long
as possible to prolong
their suffering
and humiliation.
In the case of a
slave being convicted
of killing their master,
all of the victim's
slaves would be crucified,
a practice which
sometimes involved dozens
or even hundreds of innocent
people being executed.
When Roman senator
Lucius Secundus was
murdered by a slave,
some in the Senate tried to
prevent the mass crucifixion
of 400 of his slaves,
but in the end
tradition prevailed
and every single
one was executed.
Such cruelty was not without
controversy even at the time,
celebrated Roman philosopher
Cicero described it
as a "most cruel and
disgusting punishment".
He famously wrote:
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Over the centuries,
as empires fell
and nations warred,
methods of torture
and execution became ever
more cruel and imaginative.
In Europe during
the Middle Ages,
the death penalty was
commonly used a punishment
even for minor offenses.
Execution by breaking
the body over a wheel
was a technique first
explored by the Romans.
However, use of the
"breaking wheel"
as it was to become known,
was popularized as a form
of public execution
throughout much
of Europe during
the Middle Ages.
- I think the most inhumane form
of execution is
breaking on the wheel.
You were taken to the
execution on a cart,
but on the way the
executioner had a brazier
of coals and a pair of pincers,
and they would rip
flesh from your body
before you even got
to the execution.
They would then pour
either boiling oil
or sulfur, sometimes boiling
lead, into the wound.
They would then strap you
to a wheel and break you,
and that's smashing your bones,
starting with the ankle, the
shin, the knee, the thigh.
Then the same with the next leg.
Then one arm, the wrist, the
shoulder, then the next arm.
This could take as long
as the executioner
wanted to take it.
And then the coup de grace
would be a blow to the chest.
This was either done
with a metal bar or
sometimes a sledgehammer.
- [Narrator] Once this
torture was complete,
the convict would then
be tied to the wheel
which was then
raised up on a pole
or mast, ready for a slow
and agonizing death not
unlike a crucifixion.
- Eventually the body was burned
and your ashes
scattered to the wind.
- [Narrator] The
fear of witchcraft
that spread throughout Europe
and early American settlers
proved another source
of victims for those that
delighted in the most cruel
of punishments.
Between 1400 and 1775,
approximately 100,000 people
were tried and prosecuted
for witchcraft in Europe
and the American colonies.
Around half of
these were executed.
- You had to prove
they were a witch,
which was a bit difficult.
So they were stripped naked to
search for the devil's mark,
a birthmark, a wart.
If none of those things
happened then it was up
to God to decide,
trial by ordeal.
They tied your left toe
to your right thumb,
your left thumb to your
right toe, rope round you
and threw you in the pond.
If you sank to the
bottom you were innocent.
If you rose to the surface,
as most people did,
you were a witch.
Under a law of Queen Elizabeth,
witchcraft was a criminal
offense, a hanging offense.
- [Narrator] The
most common form
of execution for those convicted
of witchcraft was to
be burned at the stake,
where the condemned was
tied to a large wooden stake
and a fire lit under them,
resulting in a protracted
and agonizing death.
- Sometimes the executioner
would tie a rope around
the neck and pull on the rope
and strangle them as the
flames were getting higher,
but often they
were burned alive.
- [Narrator] In some
cases, as small act
of mercy, a container of
gunpowder was attached
to the victim, which
would explode once heated
by the fire, killing
them instantly.
[person screaming]
There is just one European
leader who is remembered
to this day more for
his preferred manner
of execution than for
any other achievement.
Vlad Dracula, better
known as Vlad The Impaler,
ruled Romania during the
15th century, and stories
of his immense
cruelty circulated far
and wide, both during his life
and after his death in 1476.
With the invention of
the printing press,
books detailing his exploits,
together with lurid drawings,
were best sellers of the time.
He was, of course, best known
for sentencing his
enemies to impalement.
- That's a spiked wooden
pole that was greased
and then placed in any aperture
that they could find,
usually the anus.
They would hoist them onto it
and then leave them there
as they slipped down the
pole until it came out
of all different parts
of the body, sometimes
even the mouth.
This was a vile, disgusting
form of execution.
It was said that even
after his eventual defeat
and imprisonment, Vlad
took to capturing rats
in his prison cell
and impaling them
on scraps of wood.
To be hanged,
drawn and quartered
was possibly the
bloodiest method
of execution carried
out in Britain
and Ireland during
the Middle Ages.
- The whole thing was symbolic.
It was a form of torture,
even though torture
was illegal in England,
but it was to make you suffer
and it was to send you to hell.
- [Narrator] Possibly the
most gruesome punishment
ever devised, it was reserved
for those found guilty
of high treason.
- The sentence for a traitor was
that you be taken from this jail
and dragged backwards
to a place of execution.
Backwards because
what you'd thought up,
treason, was unnatural.
There you will be
hanged between heaven
and earth, not fit
to inhabit either.
We are talking of
slow strangulation,
so after two or three minutes
you would still be alive.
You'd be taken down,
laid on the drawing,
quartering and beheading block,
which is a butcher's
block for human beings,
your privy parts cut off
and burned before your eyes.
Your bowels and entrails
to be ripped out
of your belly because of the
inward treacherous thoughts
that you'd had.
Treason.
A good executioner could
get you disemboweled,
all 37 feet, small intestine,
while you're still
alive and conscious.
[people shouting]
Your head to be
severed from your body
because your head had thought
up the treacherous thoughts,
and your body divided
into four equal quarters,
and those quarters
to be at the disposal
of whatever monarch was
on the throne at the time.
- [Narrator] All of this
would take place in public,
before a baying
crowd, and in the case
of multiple executions,
convicts would be forced
to watch the disembowelment
of their fellow inmates
before it was done to them.
Finally, the
convict was beheaded
and put on display as a
gruesome warning to others.
In some cases, the head
would be pickled in a jar
in an attempt to ensure the
face remained recognizable.
Although this most extreme form
of punishment was
not used routinely,
and was reserved only for cases
of high treason, there
are many examples
of its use that are still
remembered to this day,
such as the execution
of Scottish knight
Sir William Wallace.
- When William Wallace was
hanged, drawn and quartered,
his quarters were taken
to different parts
of the country
and the reason was that
if the body wasn't whole,
then on the day of
judgment you'd go to hell.
- [Narrator] Members of the
English nobility convicted
of wrongdoing faced a
punishment more in keeping
with their status in society.
- Beheading was
reserved was kings
and queens and aristocrats.
- [Narrator] However,
no matter the status
of the convict, the
executioner himself
may not always have
been up to the task.
- You've got an executioner
that's probably taken
from the condemned cell
and asked to become
an executioner.
He's the lowest of the low,
and he's got to chop
the king's head off,
the queen's head off,
lord so and so's head off.
Now, he would
nervous, and of course
there's one very good way
of calming your nerves
down before and execution,
and that's alcohol.
So the chances of
taking a head off
in one blow was very remote.
It took three blows to take
off the head of Mary
Queen of Scotts,
and five blows to take off the
head of the Duke of Monmouth.
After the fourth blow
the body was still moving
and Monmouth was still alive.
- [Narrator] In order
to avoid such suffering,
it was customary for
the condemned person
to pay their executioner a tip,
the more generous the
payment, it was hoped,
the swifter the death would be.
- Laurence Shirley,
the 4th Earl Ferrers,
who'd murdered his bailiff,
when he gave his purse
of gold or silver, he handed it
to the assistant executioner
instead of the executioner,
and there was a punch
up on the scaffold.
- [Narrator] Across
the Channel in France,
beheading was seen as much more
of a skilled profession.
- In France they
did it with a sword,
and you had to kneel down
with your neck up and the
executioner would swing
and take the head off like that.
- [Narrator] One of the most
celebrated French executioners
was Charles Henri Sanson.
Sanson was the Royal
Executioner during the reign
of King Louis the XVI,
and was the fourth
in a six-generation family
dynasty of executioners.
- The Sanson family,
there were seven members
of the Sanson family
all became executioners.
It was passed down from,
sometimes from father to son,
from uncle to nephew.
- [Narrator] During
his lifetime,
Sanson personally executed
almost 3000 people.
On one occasion,
he was called upon
to execute a young nobleman
for the crime of blasphemy.
- He was a young man,
and you obviously had to kneel.
And Sanson said,
"Sir, will you kneel?"
and he said, "I am an
aristocrat, I will not kneel."
And he remained standing.
Sanson took one blow and went
straight through the neck.
The body continued to stand
with the head still on the neck.
Sanson looked at him and said
"Shake yourself, it's done."
And then the head rolled off
and the body crumpled
onto the floor.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- [Narrator] In
the 18th century,
the idea that the condemned
man should be forced to suffer
as much as possible
began to be replaced
by a drive for sheer efficiency.
- When the French
Revolution came,
a very famous executioner
called Henri Sanson,
who beheaded people
with a sword,
realized that if he was going
to have to execute all these
clerics, religious people,
aristocrats, he'd
need a lot of swords.
Luckily a gentleman of
the national assembly,
Dr. Ignatius Guillotine,
came up with a,
what he believed
to be a humane form
of execution, the guillotine.
- [Narrator] The
guillotine was praised
for its efficiency, an
efficiency that allowed
for an astonishing
17,000 executions
to take place in the course of
just one Revolutionary year.
[metal creaking]
[flesh squelching]
[crowd shouting]
- When they originally
designed it,
it had a crescent shaped blade,
and that wasn't efficient enough
because that actually
crushed the neck
before it took the head off,
and, would you believe,
Louis the XVI, he was a bit
of an engineer, and he had
a look at the guillotine
when it was first being made
and realized that it
would be far better
to have a blade at an
angle of 45 degrees,
which would slice
through the neck quickly.
He was one of the first people
executed on the guillotine.
- [Narrator] There is
some evidence to suggest
that death by guillotine
may not be as quick
and painless as may appear.
- There was a lot of discussion
and debate about whether
the brain continued
to function after the
head had been taken off.
In 1905, a Dr.
Beaurieux got permission
to stand by the guillotine
when a chap called
Languille was beheaded.
- The doctor waited
a few seconds,
then shouted "Languille!"
Though it remains most
famous as a device connected
to the French Revolution
and the 1700's, the
guillotine remained
as the official method
of execution in France
well into modern times and
was still in use in the 1970s.
In England in the year 1810,
Sir Samuel Romilly stated
in the British Parliament
that there was:
Over the course of the next
century this was to change,
with vast numbers of
minor crimes being
removed from the list
of capital offenses.
Public executions
ceased in 1868,
not because the public appetite
for them had diminished,
but because many influential
figures at the time
saw that they had become little
more than an entertainment,
often accompanied by
the selling of alcohol.
Charles Dickens
wrote in a letter
to The Times newspaper:
- It would be like
a day at the fair.
There'd be pie sellers,
people selling a program
of your trial and
life to read about you
as you were dangling
at the end of a rope.
There'd be pickpockets there,
riots, people would be drunk.
It came from higher up,
this was too popular,
we must stop it.
- [Narrator] With the
end of public executions,
the need for especially cruel
and gruesome punishments
was also at an end.
Death by beheading
and quartering
was officially
abolished in 1870,
all executions for the rest
of the 19th century were to
be carried out by hanging.
- In each town there
would be a county gallows,
which would be a football goal,
and then there would be one
ladder, sometimes two ladders.
You would go up one ladder,
the rope would be
fixed round your neck,
the executioner would be up
the other ladder, fixing it.
He'd come down, and then
he would turn you off,
as it was called, turning
you off the ladder,
and you died of
slow strangulation.
- [Narrator] Before
1850, the short drop
was the standard
method of hanging.
Thanks to the work of Irish
doctor Samuel Haughton,
the short drop was
superseded in the second half
of the century by
what came to be known
as the standard drop.
- It was a platform with
a lever and a trapdoor.
When the trapdoor opened
and you dropped through, it
would sever between the second
and third vertebrae,
bringing about hopefully
an instantaneous death.
- [Narrator] However, the
standard drop was no guarantee
of a quick death.
Famous examples of the failure
of this technique
include the execution
of convicted US civil
war criminal Henry Wirz.
Wirz was hanged in
November of 1865,
watched by a crowd
of spectators,
but the drop failed
to break his neck.
Spectators were forced
to watch as Wirz
was slowly strangled over
the course of 20 minutes.
The standard drop
was later superseded
by the long drop, developed
by William Marwood,
himself a practicing
executioner.
The exact height of the drop
varied depending on the height
of the convict, from
as little as four feet
to as much as eight feet.
- William Marwood,
clever as he was,
at the beginning he only
measured the victim,
he didn't weigh them.
So a man of five foot seven
and 12 stone got the same drop
of a man of five foot
seven and 20 stone.
- [Narrator] The danger with
using the long drop technique
was that if there
was a miscalculation,
the results could be horrific.
American outlaw Tom Ketchum,
known by the nickname
Black Jack, was executed
for train robbery using the
long drop technique in 1901.
Ketchum's weight was measured
when he was taken into custody,
but was not remeasured
prior to his execution,
despite significant weight
gain during his time in jail.
The extra weight was
therefore not taken
into account when the
drop was calculated
for his execution.
As Ketchum dropped with
the noose around his neck,
the force was so
violent that his head
was torn from his spine,
an image that was captured
by a photographer.
This and other such incidents
caused many United
States authorities
to look at alternative
methods of execution.
The electric chair, which
was to become synonymous
with executions in
the United States,
was first conceptualized
by a New York dentist
in 1881 to be a more humane form
of death than hanging.
The initial design took the form
of a custom-built wooden chair
with electrodes that attached
to the victim's head and leg.
After a variety of
tests on animals,
authorities and
experts remained unsure
as to the precise current
of electricity that was required
to bring about instant death.
The first official
execution by electric chair,
was, perhaps unsurprisingly,
a gruesome affair.
William Francis
Kemmler was convicted
of killing his common-law
wife Tillie Zeigler in 1889,
and his execution
was to be carried out
by electric chair on
the 6th of August, 1890.
Kemmler's last words
as he was placed
in the chair were:
The generator attached
to the chair was charged
with 1000 volts, which
was thought to be enough
to induce immediate
unconsciousness
and cardiac arrest.
This current was applied
to Kemmler for 17 seconds,
after which he was
pronounced dead.
However, witnesses pointed out
that he was still breathing.
Kemmler was quickly
examined by two physicians
who confirmed he
was still alive,
and the call was
made for the current
to be switched back on.
This time, 2000
volts were applied.
Blood vessels under Kemmler's
skin ruptured and bled,
and some witnesses claimed
his body caught fire.
A reporter for the New
York Times later wrote:
When it was finally
over, the execution
had lasted for eight minutes
and was widely considered
to have been far more cruel
and unpleasant than
the use of hanging.
- The electric chair,
not humane at all.
In my opinion an
extremely inhumane form
of execution that I still
believe is being done
in America in some
states to this day.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- [Narrator] Whilst often
cruel and merciless,
institutions throughout history
that have wielded the power
to legally take the life
of a human being have
done so either in times
of war or in response
to capital crimes
such as rape and murder.
But when a government
decides to take control
of the justice system
and use it for political ends,
simply holding the wrong opinion
or even just being
in the wrong place
at the wrong time can
result in imprisonment,
torture and execution.
"The Iron Curtain",
a term first used
by Sir Winston Churchill in
1946, referred to the area
of Russia and Eastern Europe
that came under
Communist Soviet control
after the Second World War.
The Soviets came to power in
Russia in 1917 in the midst
of a workers' revolt
and a violent coup
against the Russian monarchy.
In the century prior
to the revolution,
approximately 6000 death
sentences were handed down
due to a person's political
beliefs or activities,
and so during the Second
All Russian Congress
of Soviets of Workers'
and Soldiers' Deputies,
the new Soviet government
decreed the abolition
of the death penalty.
However, it was quickly
reinstated just a
few months later,
and by the end of the following
year the Soviet Regime
had already executed
more than 15,000 people
and they were just
getting started.
During the 1920s, the
Russian secret police
were actually issued
with quotas to determine how
many people were to be arrested
and executed, regardless of
any actual criminal activity.
- We are talking of hundreds
of thousands of people.
Stalin, I mean, had
the Polish aristocracy
and officer class
completely obliterated.
- [Narrator] During
Stalin's "Great Purge"
of the 1930s, 720,000
people were executed,
often after highly
publicized show trials
at which they were
forced to confess
to various political crimes.
In fact, the confessions
came only after weeks
of torture, including beatings
and simulated drowning.
By comparison, the method
of execution employed,
a gunshot to the head,
was at least less cruel
than under many earlier regimes.
However, the Soviets
had other ways
of ensuring the death
of their enemies.
By the time of
Stalin's death in 1953,
approximately five
million people per year
were being sentenced
to the gulag,
a series of forced labor camps,
where a slow death from cold,
over-work, torture or starvation
was often the outcome.
Many more millions were
starved as a result
of deliberately
engineered food shortages
and famines, bypassing the
justice system altogether.
By the time of the
eventual collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1989,
it is now known that tens
of millions had been put
to death by the regime,
a figure that is only matched
by equally horrific rule
of Chairman Mao
Ze Dong in China.
After a period of civil war,
the formation of the
People's Republic
of China was announced
by Mao Ze Dong on the 1st
of October, 1949.
Having received considerable
support in the year prior
from the Soviet Union,
Mao adopted a Soviet style
approach to leadership.
As in the Soviet Union,
show trials took place
at which convicts were
publicly denounced
before being taken away
for execution by way
of a bullet to the
back of the head.
[gun firing]
However, such was the political
fervor at these trials,
tensions sometimes ran so
high that the condemned person
was beaten to death
by an angry mob
before the formal execution
could be carried out.
Mao Ze Dong was himself a
fervent believer in the use
of capital punishment
against political opponents.
Indeed, unlike in virtually
every other society in history,
it was political crimes,
and only political crimes,
that Mao considered worthy
of the death penalty.
The rule of law itself
was effectively suspending
during the Cultural
Revolution, wherein people
were encouraged to attack
and destroy any remnants
of the old,
Pre-Revolutionary China.
- Hundreds of thousands
of people have
been exterminated.
- [Narrator] Whilst
the thousands
of deaths may not have been
recorded as official executions,
the use of such violence
was explicitly encouraged,
most famously by the publication
of Mao's "Little Red Book",
a collection of quotes
from Mao Ze Dong.
People were killed en
mass at political rallies,
and as in the Soviet
Union, forced labor camps
and engineered food shortages
caused many more
millions of deaths.
This period in China's
history has proved
to be the deadliest of
anywhere in the world,
with an estimated
65 million people
having lost their lives through
the action of the regime.
But perhaps the
most horrific abuse
of the power of
the state over life
and death was seen in Cambodia,
where the Communist revolution
led by Pol Pot
resulted in one quarter
of the entire population
being put to death.
Pol Pot, who was introduced
to Communist theory
while studying in
France, took control
of Cambodia in 1976
and immediately began
brutalizing the population
with his Khmer Rouge army.
[guns firing]
- Pol Pot, in Cambodia,
he created this idea
of doing away with
industrialization completely.
- [Narrator] The country's
cities were forcibly evacuated,
with the stated intent
of creating a new, agrarian
society in the countryside.
But the result was
two million deaths.
The Khmer Rouge regime executed
anyone whom it suspected
of having connections with the
former Cambodian government,
as well as professionals,
intellectuals,
Buddhists and other minorities.
- Just wearing a pair of glasses
could cause you to be executed,
because they thought
you might have been
a more intelligent person.
- [Narrator] It was also
considered necessary
to execute not only the
suspected dissident,
but often their
entire family as well.
Pol Pot himself said,
Whilst the Khmer
Rouge initially sought
to imitate their
Soviet predecessors
by carrying out
executions via a gunshot
to the back of the head,
the relative poverty
of Cambodia as a nation
meant that they simply
could not afford the cost
of the bullets
required to do so.
Those intended to
be put to death
were therefore simply struck
on the back of the head
and thrown into shallow
ditches in remote areas
known as the Killing Fields.
Even small children and
babies were not spared,
and were smashed against trees
before being thrown
into the mass graves.
Many prisoners were also
subjected to hideous torture
and medical experiments,
which were so horrific
that the prisoners tried in
every way to commit suicide.
The screams were said to
be so loud that they had
to be covered by loudspeakers
playing propaganda music
of the Khmer Rouge.
Today, the site of the
most notorious prison
has been turned into a
museum, where it is recorded
that more than 20,000
people had been tortured
and imprisoned there.
This was just one of
almost 200 similar prisons
that existed
throughout the country.
- More like ethnic cleansing,
I think, than execution.
We are talking of hundreds
of thousands of people.
- [Narrator] By the end
of the 20th Century,
it's widely believed that
the Communist regimes
in power in the Soviet Union
and elsewhere, had together
been responsible for the deaths
of over 100 million people.
[dramatic orchestral music]
As the 20th century progressed,
more and more voices in
the Western world began
to question the legitimacy
of capital punishment.
Over the course of numerous
individual acts of Parliament,
laws in the United
Kingdom gradually changed.
Whilst the public
overwhelmingly supported the use
of the death penalty
in cases of murder,
a number of miscarriages
of justice during the 1950s
strengthened the
case for abolition.
The Homicide Act of 1957
attempted to create
two different
classifications of murder,
those which were capital crimes,
and those which were not.
Capital punishment for murder
was finally abolished
completely by an Act
of Parliament in 1965.
- When we abolished
hanging in 1965,
some people were against hanging
and some people
were for hanging,
but the interesting
thing is that from 1965
until 2001 the amount of murders
that took place in
this country doubled.
- [Narrator] Capital
punishment did remain
for a small number of
very specific crimes:
Surprisingly, until 1973
the official punishment
for the crime of treason
was death by beheading,
although this was never
actually carried out.
All remaining capital
offenses, including treason,
were finally removed from
law in the late 1990's
by the Tony Blair government,
bringing the UK into alignment
with much of Europe.
As of the present day,
capital punishment is banned
in all members of
the European Union.
Whilst Russia retains
capital crimes in law,
no executions have taken
place there since the 1990s.
In all of Europe,
only Belarus actively
retains the death penalty,
where it is carried
out by shooting.
Even in the United
States of America,
the death penalty
today is seldom used,
with the number of executions
per year having reduced
from 85 in the year 2000 to
just 24 in the year 2023.
The vast majority of
these were carried out
by lethal injection.
The idea of using an injection
of lethal chemicals to
cause an immediate death
was first proposed
in the late 1800s
by New York doctor
Julius Mount Bleyer,
writing in the
Medico-Legal Journal.
However, lethal
injection as a method
of execution was not
adopted in law until 1977.
Despite the straightforward
sounding name,
death by lethal injection is
a relatively complex process.
- One of the problems
is, of course,
is 'cause a doctor can't do it,
because they'll be breaking
the Hippocratic Oath,
so it's left to some form
of prison official to do it,
and an awful lot of those
that are executed in
America these days
of course are taking
drugs intravenously,
and they can't find a vein.
And even, sometimes,
the condemned man
is actually helping the prison
official to find a vein.
- [Narrator] The process begins
with the condemned person
having two intravenous cannulas
inserted, one in each arm.
A saline drip is then
started in both arms
to ensure that the
lines are not blocked,
and a heart monitor is
attached to the inmate.
The lethal chemicals
are then added to the IV
in a specific order to first
induce unconsciousness followed
by death through paralysis
of the respiratory muscles
or by cardiac arrest.
The chemical combination used
begins with Sodium Piothentol,
which normally causes
unconsciousness
within 30 seconds.
This is followed by
Pancuronium Bromide,
a muscle relaxant
which causes paralysis
of the diaphragm, sufficient
to cause death by asphyxiation.
Finally, Potassium
Chloride to stop the heart,
resulting in death
by cardiac arrest.
This normally occurs
within minutes,
though there have
been recorded cases
where the entire process
took more than an hour.
- I don't understand why
they have such a problem,
because when your
animal is put to sleep
they give it an injection
and it goes to sleep,
and then they give an
injection that kills it.
But for some reason
they never seem, well,
sometimes don't seem to
get the mixture right.
- [Narrator] Some opponents
to the technique point out
that once the muscle relaxant
has been administered,
there is no way to tell
if the initial dose
of Sodium Piothentol
has actually
fully induced unconsciousness.
Since the muscle relaxant
causes paralysis,
it may be that the
inmate suffers great pain
during the administering
of Potassium Chloride,
but is simply unable to
express their discomfort.
In other parts of the
world, capital punishment
is still very much
on the agenda.
In the Islamic world, the Quran
specifies the death penalty
for a large number of crimes.
An Amnesty International report
from 2020 calculated
that almost 90%
of all the world's executions
took place in either Iran,
Iraq, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Death by decapitation
is the form
of execution most
associated with Islamic law,
although surprisingly it is
not explicitly called for
in the Quran, although some
scholars site a reference
to "smiting the
necks" of enemies.
Currently, Saudi Arabia
is the only country
in the world which
uses decapitation
within its Islamic legal system.
The majority of
executions carried out
by the Wahhabi government
are public beheadings,
which usually draw large crowds
but are not allowed to be
photographed or filmed.
Outside of the Islamic
world, the largest number
of executions carried out today
by a single nation take place
in the People's
Republic of China.
Unlike the chaos of the Mao era,
modern China has a
rigorous justice system.
Whilst some political crimes
remain capital offenses,
added to the list are
more typical crimes
including arson, rape of a
minor and drug trafficking.
Capital punishment in
China can be imposed
on crimes against
national symbols
and treasures, such as
theft of cultural relics
and even the killing
of giant pandas.
Elsewhere in South East Asia,
capital punishment
remains in use,
particularly for
drugs-related offenses,
in Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam.
Japan retains the death
penalty for aggravated murder
and utilizes the long
drop method of hanging.
Despite its abolition
many decades ago,
popular opinion in Europe
remains generally in favor
of capital punishment, although
only by a small margin.
- I think the last poll
they had, I believe 59%
of the population of this
country believe that some form
of death penalty
should be reintroduced.
- [Narrator] Those in favor
of its reintroduction normally
refer to the fact that fear
of execution acts as the
strongest possible deterrent.
Perhaps the most emotional
argument in favor
of the death penalty,
particularly in cases
of murder, is that the
perpetrator simply deserves
such a punishment, "an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth"
as the famous
Biblical quote has it.
As we have seen,
the justice systems
of many ancient
societies were founded
on exactly this basis,
and in all of human history,
the move towards abolishing
the death penalty in much
of world represents a
tiny fragment of time.
It was only a few
short decades ago,
within the lifetime of many
people still alive today,
that millions of people
were being executed
by regimes that some
in the West praised
and still defend today.
- I personally
believe that some form
of death sentence should be
administered for the murder
of children, murder of policemen
and premeditated murder.
You bought the
gun, you loaded it
with six bullets and you
pulled the trigger five times.
You meant to do it.
- [Narrator] Could it be
that capital punishment
will make a return
to Western Europe?
In light of the
growing discontent
with the apparent acquiescence
to lawlessness
currently being felt
in many European capitals,
it may be a question
not of if, but of when.
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