STONED, SHOT, BEHEADED

There are many methods for execution, Mike Strobel says, but nothing compares to 'the good old days'

Thu, January 4, 2007

By Mike Strobel

STONED, SHOT, BEHEADED

"My wife knows way too much about hanging," says Woody, a workmate from Newcastle. There is worry in his eyes.

"She was telling me how it breaks two bones and you die just like that," Woody snaps his fingers.

I guess there is not much to occupy one's mind in Newcastle.

Or perhaps hanging is in the air out there. Down the road in Cobourg, in 1859, a Dr. King was strung up for poisoning Mrs. King. The doc was a swinger in more ways than one.

One report says the execution drew 10,000 spectators.

Again, a hanging is in the news.

Saddam Hussein's trapdoor trapeze is a conversation piece in Newcastle and elsewhere.

Did he feel anything? Did his toes twitch? Can a neck really stretch like that? In the "after" pictures, he was more Giraffe of Najaf than Beast of Baghdad.

In fact, the Lion of the Desert was lucky.

Woody's wife is right. There are worse ways to be executed.

You know this if you saw what they did to Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

These days, no nation draws and quarters people.

Firing squad is the preferred method in 43 lands, hanging in 33, stoning in six, lethal injection in five, beheading in three.

Several mix and match. Fun-loving Sudan offers hanging, stoning, firing squad and crucifixion.

Boy, I'm glad I'm not the tourism minister of Sudan.

China is the champ, with so many executions (3,500 a year) it has mobile units for the purpose.

The U.S. in 2005 did a measly 60.

The Americans have the widest variety of all. The needle, the noose, the chair, the chamber, the firing squad.

I always figured I'd choose injection. Then I read last month where Florida and California have suspended the method because of missed veins and other botch-ups.

In one case, an inmate was seen to grimace and mouth words of protest when he should have been out cold.

Nothing, though, compares to the good old days, when miscreants were dispatched in myriad ways.

You could be beaten to death or boiled.

Burning at the stake was awful and slow, especially if they set the flames to reach only your waist.

Flaying was a joy. They skinned you. It could take all day.

Don't even ask about the hot poker. King Edward II died on one in 1327. Or you could be crushed by rocks.

The Iron Maiden was a cabinet that pierced victims with metal rods, missing vital organs so death was leisurely.

Not for nothing was a metal band named Iron Maiden.

The rack, a fave of the Inquisition, stretched you to death.

Throat slitting, being quick and fairly painless, was rare.

My favourite is the Spanish Donkey. You sat straddling a sawhorse-like device and they attached weights to your feet.

By the time you died, your nickname was Longshanks.

Down the line from England, Geoffrey Abbott tells me of the world's worst execution.

Mr. Abbott would know. He is author of 22 books with such titles as Rack, Rope And Red-Hot Pincers, Lipstick On The Noose and The Executioner Always Chops Twice.

The worst? They sew you up inside a mule's carcass and let the heat and bugs do their work.

"I hope you haven't just eaten lunch," Abbott says.

He is coy about his age, but he fixed Spitfires in WW II.

So, Mr. Abbott, you've seen it all. Is hanging humane?

"Not necessarily. How rapidly the vertebrae are snapped depends on so many things. The weight of the victim, his age, the strength of his neck.

"Many times it has taken three drops to hang someone."

Hangmen use a "drop table" to determine the length of rope. At 225 pounds, I'd need just five feet. Time for a new diet.

Say, is it true they always leave the knot to the left of your neck? Like in the Saddam video?

"Just shows the hangman was right-handed," says Abbott.

"One thing worried me. They said he dropped 15 feet. That could have torn his head off. It happens. Very messy.

"Everyone says, 'Oh, how inhumane,' and they forget all the horrible things the victim did to get onto the scaffold."

Okay, let's forget hanging. Stick your neck out, Mr. Abbott, how would you want to be executed?

"Guillotine. It's the only absolute, accurate way. The blade comes down, the head is severed immediately.

"It lost favour out of sympathy for the onlookers. Everyone was appalled by the spectacle of all that blood."

Except the dearly beheaded.

So leave the noose to the likes of Saddam Hussein.

Give me Madame Guillotine.

I hate suspense.

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