hanging

Hanging is a form of execution or a method of committing suicide. It has been used throughout history as a form of capital punishment, first in the Persian Empire, and is still used in some countries. There are four methods of hanging — the long, short, and standard drops, as well as suspension hanging.

Contemporary use of hanging as a legal method of execution

Currently hanging is still a method of capital punishment in many countries with civil law, including; India, Malaysia, Singapore, as well as Islamic countries that follow Sharia law, such as Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

India

•A recent case of capital punishment by hanging is that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of the 1990 murder and rape of a 14 year old girl in Kolkata in India. Although the Supreme Court of India has suggested that capital punishment be given in the rarest of rare cases, Chatterjee was executed on August 14, 2004 in the first execution in West Bengal for eleven years.

Iran

As one of the means of Capital punishment in Iran, hangings are carried out by using an automotive telescoping crane to hoist the condemned aloft.
• On July 19, 2005, two Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, at the ages of 15 and 17 respectively, who had been discovered to be having homosexual relations, and had been imprisoned for fourteen months and subjected to 228 lashes each, were publicly hanged at Edalat (Justice) Square in Mashhad, northeast Iran, on charges of homosexuality and rape. ^[1][2]
• Atefeh Sahaaleh, a.k.a. Ateqeh Rajabi, (1988 to August 15, 2004) was a 16-year-old Iranian girl who was executed in Iran after being sentenced to death by an Iranian judge, for having committed "acts incompatible with chastity.

Iraq

• On March 9, 2006, an official of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council confirmed that Iraqi authorities executed 13 insurgents by hanging, the first official executions of insurgents carried out in the country since the restoration of the death penalty in 2004. In September 2003, three murderers were executed.^[3]

Japan

• On February 27, 2004 the mastermind of the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Shoko Asahara, was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Hanging is the common method of execution in capital punishment cases in Japan; at present there are 88 people reported to be on death row in Japan.

Singapore

In Singapore, mandatory hanging using the long-drop method is currently used as punishment for various crimes, such as drug trafficking, kidnapping and unauthorised possession of firearms. There is no evidence that this policy may be changed in the future ^[4].
• In Singapore, a 25-year old Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, was hanged on December 2, 2005 after being convicted of drug trafficking in 2002. Numerous efforts from both the Australian government, Queen's Counsels and petitions from organisations such as Amnesty International failed to persuade Singapore to rescind its decision.

United States

At present, only the states of Washington, New Hampshire and Kansas still retain hanging as an option. An unspecified state's laws were changed in 1996 to specify that penalties of death must be executed by injection unless the convict chooses hanging, but no hangings have taken place ever since. ^{citation needed]} In New Hampshire if it be found "... to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death ..." by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged.^[5]

In 1996, Billy Bailey became the last person executed by hanging in the United States to date.

Suicide

Suspension hanging is a common method of suicide. The materials necessary for suicide by hanging are relatively easily available to the average person, compared with firearms or lethal poison, as most people can obtain rope, and tree branches or wooden beams can provide something to hang oneself from. For this reason hanging is especially popular in prisons.
• In Canada, hanging is the second most common method of suicide ^[6].
• In the US, hanging is the second most common method of suicide, after firearms, ^[7].
• In Great Britain, where firearms are less easily available, as of 2001 hanging was the most popular method among men and the second most-popular among women (after poisoning).^[8]

Famous suicides by hanging

• Jonathan Brandis, an American teenage actor.
• Judas Iscariot, a prominent figure in the Christian gospels.
• Michael Hutchence, lead singer of INXS
• Hans Berger, German inventor of electroencephalography.
• Harold Shipman, English doctor, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division.
• Phil Ochs, political folksinger
• Fred West, serial killer
• Hideto Matsumoto, Japanese rock musician

Historical references by country

Australia

The last man executed by hanging in Australia was Ronald Ryan on February 3, 1967.

Great Britain

Main article: Capital punishment in the United Kingdom

As a form of judicial execution in England, hanging is thought to date from the Saxon period, approximately around 400. Records of the names of British hangmen begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s; complete records extend from the 1500s to the last hangmen, Robert Leslie Stewart and Harry Allen, who conducted the last British executions in 1964.

In 1965 Parliament passed the "Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act" abolishing capital punishment for murder. And with the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998, the death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both civilian and military cases.

Germany

In the territories occupied by Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945, strangulation hanging was a preferred means of public execution. The most common victims were partisans and black marketeers. The victims were usually left hanging for long periods of time.

Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, the last persons to be sentenced to death by hanging were Andrey Vlasov and 11 other officers of his army on August 1, 1946.

United States

Main articles: Capital punishment in the United States, Capital punishment in New Hampshire, and Capital punishment in Washington

In the United States the short-drop method was used until the 19th century, when the long drop was introduced. The short drop could be a protracted affair and was primarily for the entertainment of the watching public, the struggling of the victim giving rise to such terms as "the hangman's hornpipe." Since then, other forms of capital punishment, such as the electric chair and more recently lethal injection, have largely replaced hanging.

The last public hanging legally conducted in the United States (and also the last public execution in the United States) was that of Rainey Bethea, who was publicly hanged on August 14, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky.

As of 2006 the last person to have been hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, on January 25, 1996 in Delaware; that state has since changed the legal method of execution to lethal injection. Bailey was initially sentenced to hang, but later given the choice to change his mode of execution when the law was changed. However, he deferred to the original sentence.

Medical effects

The cause of death in hanging depends on the conditions related to the event. When the body is released from a relatively high position, death is usually caused by severing the spinal cord between C1 and C2, which may be functional decapitation (although even in this case, some circulation to the brain may be maintained through deep vessels, such as the vertebral arteries). High cervical fracture frequently occurs in judicial hangings, and in fact the C1-C2 fracture has been called the "Hangman's fracture" in medicine, even when it occurs in other circumstances.

In the absence of fracture and dislocation, spinal cord damage may have a role but occlusion of blood vessels becomes a major cause of death. Obstruction of venous drainage of the brain via occlusion of the internal jugular veins leads to cerebral oedema and then cerebral ischemia. Other processes that have been suggested to contribute are vagal collapse (via mechanical stimulation of the carotid sinus), and compromise of the cerebral blood flow by obstruction of the carotid arteries, even though their obstruction requires far more force than the obstruction of jugular veins, since they are seated deeper and they contain blood in much higher pressure compared to the jugular veins. Only 7 lb of pressure may be enough to constrict the carotid arteries to the point of rapid unconsciousness (this varies from individual to individual). When cerebral circulation is severely compromised by any mechanism, arterial or venous, death occurs over four or more minutes from cerebral hypoxia, although the heart may continue to beat after the brain is no longer resuscitatable. When death occurs in such cases, is a matter of convention. In judicial hangings, death is pronounced at cardiac arrest, which may occur at times from several minutes up to 15 minutes or longer, after hanging. During suspension, once the prisoner has lapsed into unconsciousness, rippling movements of the body and limbs may occur for some time which are usually attributed to nervous and muscular reflexes. Where death has been caused by strangulation, the face will typically have become engorged and cyanosed (turned blue through lack of oxygen). There will be the classic sign of strangulation - petechiae - little blood marks on the face and in the eyes from burst blood capillaries. The tongue may protrude. Where death has occurred through carotid or Vagal reflex, the face will typically be pale in colour and not show petechiae. There exist many reports and pictures of actual short drop hangings which seem to show that the person died quickly and fairly peacefully, while others indicate a slow and agonising death by strangulation. There is a popular myth about sexual stimulation of hanging victims, due to the apparent erection some of them were exhibiting. The effect is attributed to a common priapism caused by spinal cord damage that the hanging execution mechanism inflicts. (This myth fuels the auto-erotic asphyxiation, a practice that might lead to an accidental death.) After death, the body typically shows marks of suspension, e.g. bruising and rope marks on the neck. This form of asphyxial death by hanging is known medically as anoxia and is also the normal cause of death in suicide hangings. Total body death results usually within less than 20 minutes as the brain becomes starved of oxygen. In Britain, it was normal to leave the body suspended for an hour to ensure death.

Forensic experts may often be able to tell if hanging is suicide or homicide, as each leaves a distinctive ligature mark. One of the hints they use is the hyoid bone, that, if broken, often means the person has been murdered, by manual choking. Also, there have been cases of autoerotic asphyxiation leading to death; children have accidentally died playing the choking game.

A long-drop hanging may break the neck (cervical fracture) causing traumatic spinal cord injury and consequent asphyxia and brain hypoxia.^[9]

A hanging may also cause one or more of the following medical conditions:

• Close the airway causing asphyxia
• Close the carotid arteries
• Close the jugular veins
• Induce carotid reflex, which reduces heartbeat when the pressure in the carotid arteries is high, causing cardiac arrest
• Sever the cruciate ligament of the first cervical vertebrae, forcing the dens in into the central nervous system, resulting in death. This is know as pithing, and is considered by anatomists to be the most common effect of a judicial hanging (Monkhouse's Anatomy).

Grammar

The correct past tense of the verb "to hang" is disputed. It is conventional to use "hung" generally, but "hanged" when referring to an execution or death by hanging.^[10] This convention has never been universally followed.

References

See also

• Hangman's knot
• Capital punishment
• Hanging in NDH
• Hanging Judge
• Death erection
• Gallows
• Hand of Glory
• Jack Ketch
• Lynching
• Official Table of Drops

External links

• Hanging injuries and strangulation