The methods of execution making following a legal decision pronouncing the capital punishment are numerous and very variables according to the times and of the countries.
They are generally applied to condemned to died by a Bourreau.

Old methods

Regarded as particularly cruel, these methods famous are disappeared, even if testimonys reveal that certain substistent in certain parts of the world.

• various methods using of the animal :
• quartering by horses
• devoured by wild animals
• bite of snake
• crushing by an elephant
• the Crucifixion, practiced in the ancient Rome (revolt of Spartacus, for example)
• the Decapitation with the sword, the Axe or the Guillotine
• the Découpage consists in dividing the members with an instrument more or less edge: chop, saber or even saw. Partial cutting revêt a particular symbolic system.
• the Sawing, either longitudinal while starting with the groin, or transverse.
• the alive Cutting-up, practiced especially in China under the name of Lingchi until the beginning of the 20th century, for exceptional crimes, like those towards the imperial family.
• crushing
• skinning
• Emmurement in room hermetically closed (deprivation of air, food and drink)
• Hiding alive
• éventration
• Fire, that is to say on To rough-hew, on grill, or locked up in furnace
• Scourging, could to be mortal from 40e blow, when it was applied using the Knout in Russia tsarist
• the shattering of the cranium, which was used by the Indians of Amazonia, them blacks of equatorial Africa and Polynesian S.
• the Shooting by a Firing squad, often intended for the soldiers (sedition, desertion, rebellion…)
• the gazage
• the ebullient Oil (counterfeiter)
• the Drowning, in particular used for executions of mass as during the French revolution (see: Drownings of Nantes)
• the stake, set up in system by the prince Vlad Tepes, alias Dracula.
• the Hanging (Gibet, Forks patibulaires) - used towards condemned to died at the time of the Lawsuit of Nuremberg
• the strong Sorrow and lasts a little everywhere
• the precipitation starting from a raised place, spread in the world. It summer practiced in Zaire in the Eighties pennies the mode mobutist, it is characterized by the jet of carried out by helicopter in a volcano in eruption of which the goal is to make disappear the body. Still practiced with the beginning of the year 1990 in Iran and Iraq.
• the Suicide forced
• the Torture of the wheel consists in having the broken members and the chest, the body attached to a wheel.
• the Strangulation (Lace throttle valve also called Garrot: used in particular in Spain until the end of the mode of the general Free)
• the Scaphisme, however little brought back
• the Virgin iron

These methods were applied by a Bourreau.

Current methods

The majority of the methods of execution referred to above are not used any more. Those employees today are regarded as more human (intended to make suffer the least possible condemned), except lapidation:

• electrocution on a Electric chair was abandoned in the United States safe in the States of the Nebraska, of the Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
• the shooting:
• by a Firing squad is the most widespread procedure (in 2001, 73 countries used it, in particular for military crimes or against the state security, such as the Trahison or in times of Guerre)
• by the shooting of a ball in the nape of the neck of condemned (in China or Russia)
• the Gazage (practically abandoned in the United States)
• the Lethal injection (37 States out of 38 practitioner the capital punishment with the the United States): In 2006, out of 53 capital executions, 52 were it by lethal injection;

• the Hanging (Japan, Iran, Iraq, India, Singapore and two States American (Washington and New Hampshire, not used in 2006))

• the Decapitation with the saber (in Saudi Arabia)
• the Lapidation (in particular in Saudi Arabia and Iran)

Others

Among other methods, carried out more or less summarily with or without legal decision, let us quote:

• the Eagle of blood

• the Défenestration
• the Lynching
• the Poison
• the Torment of the tire in certain countries of Africa (to be brought closer to the Lynching in the direction where the sentence is applied summarily by crowd or a group of people not having penal matter authority).

See too

Internal bonds

• List of works dealing with the capital punishment
• Acetane

External bonds

• Internationalist Review Article published in the Internationalist Review one the evolution off execution methods in the United States

Random links:

Alexandre Sanguinetti | Alliance for the democracy with the African Mali-Party for solidarity and justice | Georges Charpy | Erwin Resch | Metsovo