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Shot at dawn! Execution by shooting & the firing squad |
In most
countries, up until the 20th century, shooting was reserved for military
personnel with civilians being executed by other methods, mostly hanging. For
some reason, shooting was considered a more honourable death for soldiers than
hanging. From the military perspective it had obvious advantages - the
necessary personnel and equipment for a firing squad were always readily
available.
Shooting became the standard form of execution in most Communist countries
during the 20th century, and they are still the main users, even where they
have abandoned Communism. The former Russian states have now all but abolished
the death penalty although shooting executions were common up to the early
90's, mostly by a single pistol shot to the back of the head or neck.
Shooting executions seem to be declining rapidly in the 21st century as the
main user,
Countries using shooting in the 21st century. Click here for a picture of a modern firing squad execution in
the
Sixty nine countries had shooting as a lawful method of execution up to
2000, either exclusively or for some classes of crime or criminal (e.g.
military personnel are shot whist civilians are hanged as in
30
executions by shooting were recorded in 2007,
with 15 in
In 2006 just twenty confirmed executions
by shooting were recorded. There were three in Bahrain on the 11th of December
2006, the first executions here since 1996. Jasmine Anwar Hussain
was
reported to have taken 10 minutes to bleed to death after she and her
accomplice were executed in Bahrain’s Jaw prison. They were each tied to a chair and either
blindfolded or hooded before being shot through the chest by a six man firing
squad.
Three men were executed in
During 2005, there were at least 41 executions
by shooting. They took place in Indonesia (3), Libya (15), Palestine (1),
Uzbekistan (1), Vietnam (9) and Yemen (7). It is probable that China continued
to use shooting during this year.
Uzbekistan shootings are carried out by a single bullet to the back of the
head. Indonesia, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine and Vietnam use conventional firing
squads and had a total of 28 executions.
At least
72 men and 11 women were shot in 2004. 34
men and ten women were executed by police firing squads in
Three drug traffickers were shot in
China
has the death penalty for 68 crimes including murder, drug trafficking, rape,
re-selling VAT receipts, pimping, habitual theft, stealing or dealing in
national treasures or cultural relics, publishing pornography, selling
counterfeit money, economic offences such as graft, speculation and
profiteering and even killing a panda.
During the "Strike hard" campaign against crime in
Executions are often carried out immediately after a public sentencing rally
and the criminal's family is made to pay for the bullet.
The prisoner's arms are shackled behind them and they are made to kneel down
before receiving a single bullet fired at close range into the back of the head
or neck by a soldier or policeman or by a bullet fired into the heart from
behind using an automatic rifle. (Click here for photo)
Chinese laws do not specifically state the site of execution grounds and
shootings are carried out at military target ranges and along river banks and
on remote hill sides, the prisoners being transported in open lorries from the sports stadiums where they were sentenced.
Condemned criminals are not executed inside prisons because it is regarded as
inhumane for other inmates to hear the sound of gunfire.
In a typical mass public execution in December 1995, 13 men and women convicted
of murder and highway robbery were shot after the Court dismissed their appeals. Chinese television showed the 9 men and 4
women being paraded at a sports stadium in front of a crowd of more than 10,000
before being taken to the execution ground on a nearby hillside.
Frequently the kidneys, hearts and corneas are removed from the dead prisoners
and used in transplants at local hospitals. "Execution is one of the
indispensable means of education," China's paramount leader, Deng
Xiaoping, once said.
During 1997,
Iran.
In
the years following the 1979 revolution, Iran shot hundreds if not thousands of
criminals, reaching a peak in the early 1980's. Their crimes included murder,
drug trafficking, adultery, prostitution, armed robbery, political violence and
religious offences. Typically those who were to be shot were lined up in groups
seated on the ground along a wall and blindfolded. They were each shot by a
Revolutionary Guard standing in front of them using an automatic rifle. Since
then Iranian executions have been mostly by hanging.
Nigeria.
Nigeria
uses both hanging and shooting and on Saturday, July 22nd, 1995, executed 43
convicted armed robbers at the Kirikiri maximum
security prison in Lagos before a hushed crowd of around a 1,000 people.
It was the largest number of executions in one day in Nigeria for decades and
was intended to crack down on a recent upsurge in violent crime.
The prisoners, some of whom had been on death row for as long as 16 years, were
tied to stakes at the Kirikiri shooting range before
a 12 man firing squad of soldiers marched in from behind the prison walls and
opened fire. The soldiers dressed in camouflage and with black shoe polish on
the faces used semi-automatic weapons to execute the convicts in 3 groups of 12
and one of 7.
The executions began at 9:30 a.m. and ended at 11 a.m. Three doctors, one a
woman, certified the deaths, and an Irish Roman Catholic priest and a Moslem
Imam witnessed them.
Armed robbers are frequently sentenced to be shot and at one time in the
northern state of Kaduna, the Military Governor
thought that shooting gave the prisoner too quick a death and decided that
their agony should be prolonged by ordering the firing squad to aim at the feet
and legs and then progressively higher up with each volley until the prisoner
died.
Thailand.
Uniquely,
Thailand used a single executioner with a one stand mounted machine gun per
prisoner, to put murderers and drug traffickers to death. Over 500 people were
shot in Thailand between 1937, when shooting replaced beheading and October
2003, when Thailand moved to lethal injection as its sole method of execution.
All those sentenced to death there were held at Bang Kwang
maximum security prison, about 20 miles outside Bangkok. The virtually
soundproof execution chamber, known as the "Place to Relieve
Suffering," contained two wooden crosses and two stand mounted Heckler
& Koch 9mm machine guns.
Prisoners are confined in heavy leg irons from the time of sentence to the time
of execution, which could be anything from a few weeks to a few years and were
told of their fate only hours before they were shot.
On the day of execution, the prisoner was taken from their cell and
photographed and fingerprinted. They were then taken to the execution chamber
and handcuffed to a cross like wooden frame with their back to the machine gun,
4 meters behind them. A white cloth blindfold is applied and the hands tied
with a sacred Buddhist cord. Flowers are hung from the prisoner’s hands as an
offering to Buddha and a canvas screen is pulled between the condemned and the
gun. A target is fixed onto the screen level with the prisoner’s heart and the
gun aimed at the centre of the target.
The executioner takes up his position, watching another member of the
execution team who raises a red flag, and on the signal from the prison
governor, the flag is dropped and the executioner fires a fully automatic burst
of 15 rounds into the victim’s heart.
Fourteen men and one woman faced this death during 1999. Only one
execution was recorded in 2000. There were at least 6 in 2001 and another 6 in
2002 and 4 in 2003. Click
here for a photo of Thai execution.
Five men were shot on
Vietnam.
Executions are carried out by a firing squad comprised
of 7 policemen. Six of the men fire
rifles while the captain fires a final shot to the head from a handgun. The prisoners are blindfolded and tied to
stakes at execution grounds in the suburbs of Vietnamese cities. Relatives of the condemned are not informed
of the execution beforehand, but are asked to collect the prisoners
belongings two or three days afterwards.
Although the Government has cut the number of crimes punishable by death
to 29 from 43, some 40 men and 7 women have been shot during 2004. Only 9 executions were recorded in 2005 and 6
in 2006. The Vietnamese Prime Minister, Phan Van Khai, has instructed the ministries of Justice and Public
Security to look into the possibility of changing the method of execution to an
automated shooting process due to the fact that nervous young policemen
sometimes miss their target.
The American state of
Utah
is the only state to have used the firing squad in recent times. Only Utah and
Idaho allow this method and it is doubtful whether either state will use it
again unless a prisoner specifically elects it.
Four of Utah’s condemned prisoners have indicated that they will choose
this option.
On the 17th of January 1977, Gary Mark Gilmore became the first person to be
executed in the U.S. for 12 years after putting up a strenuous campaign to be
allowed to die. He chose shooting. Under Utah law in force at the time, the
condemned man had the choice of shooting by firing squad or hanging. He was
executed by 6 volunteers in the old canning factory in the prison grounds using
Winchester Model 94 lever action repeating rifles loaded with Winchester Silver
Tip 150-grain .30-30 caliber cartridges. Only 5 of
the rifles had live ammunition, the sixth containing a blank round so that the
firing squad would not know who had fired the fatal shots.
He was tied to a chair and had a white target pinned over his heart. After the
death warrant had been read to him, he was asked if there was anything he
wanted to say and uttered the famous line, "Let’s do it."
His execution renewed the capital punishment process in America and was
graphically described in the Norman Mailer book and subsequent film "The
Executioner's Song."
Nineteen years later, John Taylor became the second person to suffer the same
fate.
Taylor, 36, was convicted of the 1988 rape and strangulation of 11-year-old Charla King and was duly executed on the 26th of January
1996 at 12:03 a.m. Mountain Time. One of the 9 media witnesses, Paul Murphy of
As the volley hit him Taylor's hands squeezed up, went down, and came up and
squeezed again. His chest was covered
with blood." The prison doctor came in, cut holes in the hood and examined
Taylor's pupils to verify he was dead. "The image I have when I close my
eyes is of his chest heaving upward after he was shot," said witness Kevin
Dale Stanfield.
" John Albert Taylor was pronounced dead at 12:07," said Ray Wahl,
director of field operations at the Utah State Prison. "It went like
clockwork, just like we rehearsed," prison warden Hank Galetka
told reporters. "There was no hesitation at all," "Taylor went
to his death with steely determination even though only hours before he had to
be given medication because his stomach was "doing flip-flops."
Yemen.
Almost
all executions in Yemen are for murder and are carried out in public, normally
attended by relatives of the victim.
One of the most notable recent executions was carried out on the 20th of June
2001 when Sudanese mortuary assistant, Mohammad Adam Omar, nicknamed "the
Sana'a Ripper," was shot in front of a crowd of 50,000 for the rape and
murder of two university students. He was brought into the execution ground (a
sports stadium) with his hands cuffed behind his back and was ordered to lie
face down. His executioner fired 3 shots into his heart with an AK-47 assault
rifle and as Omar was still moving, fired a fourth shot from close range into
his head.
The firing squad in
As
mentioned earlier, the firing squad has always been the preferred method of
military execution, no British civilian having ever been shot. (Click here for a photo of a typical firing squad execution.)
It is not known when shooting was first used as a method of execution in
Britain, but there are records of soldiers being executed by shooting during
the English Civil War in the 17th Century and Roche's 18th century map of
London shows an area adjacent to Tyburn gallows "where soldiers are
shot."
On July 18th, 1743, 3 members of the Highland Regiment, who had been convicted
of mutiny, were shot at dawn on Tower Green. They were shot by an 18 man firing
squad.
During World War 1, at least 306 soldiers were shot for desertion, cowardice
and other offences. Many of these were young recruits who were probably
suffering from shell shock. There has been a long campaign to get posthumous
pardons for them which came to fruition in 2006 when the Government decided to
pardon all of them. A monument to them in the form of an Arboretum containing a
statue of an unnamed soldier facing the firing squad has been created at Alrewas in Staffordshire. 2006. Desertion ceased to carry
the death penalty after 1930.
Foreigners convicted of spying in the 1st World War were normally sentenced to
die by firing squad, the executions taking place on the rifle range in the
Tower of London. According to usual practice, the condemned was tied to a chair
with a target pinned over his heart and shot by a 6 man firing squad from the
Scots Guards regiment. One of their rifles contained a blank round. Twelve men
were to suffer this fate, 11 during World War 1 and one during World War 2,
when on Thursday, August the 14th, 1941, Josef Jakobs,
a German spy, was executed. It is thought that Jakobs
was shot as he was an NCO in the German Army. All other spies captured during
World War 2 were hanged at either Pentonville or Wandsworth prisons in London.
Two American soldiers were executed by firing squad at Shepton Mallet prison
during World War 2. They were 20 year old Alex Miranda, who shot his sergeant,
for which he was in turn shot on the 30th of May 1944 and Benjamin Pyegate, who had stabbed a fellow soldier to death for
which he was executed on the 28th of November 1944. Soldiers convicted of
murder (or rape in the case of U.S. soldiers) were hanged either in British
civilian prisons or at the U.S. Military prison at Shepton Mallet. For more on
British firing squad executions visit http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/
How
shooting kills.
Shooting
can be carried out by a single executioner who fires from a short range at the
back of the head or neck, as is the case in China and the USSR (before
abolition). The intention of shooting at short range is to destroy the vital
centres of the medulla (lower brain stem), as happens when a captive bolt is
used for slaughtering cattle. This
method typically results in instant unconsciousness due to concussion caused by
the fracturing of the scull and destruction of the brain tissue.
The
traditional firing squad is made up of 3 to 6 shooters per prisoner who stand
or kneel opposite the condemned who is usually tied to
a stake or a chair. Normally the shooters aim at the chest, since this is
easier to hit than the head. A firing squad aiming at the head produces the
same type of wounds as those produced by a single bullet, but bullets fired at
the chest rupture the heart, large blood vessels and lungs so that the
condemned person dies of haemorrhage and shock. It is not unusual for the
officer in charge of the firing squad to have to give the prisoner a "coup
de grace" - a pistol shot to the head to finish them off after the initial
volley has failed to kill them.
A bullet
produces a cavity which has a volume many times that of the bullet. Cavitation is probably due to the heat dissipated when the
impact of the bullet boils the water and volatile fats in the tissue which it
strikes. According to Dr. Le Garde, in his book
"Gunshot Injuries," it is proved both in theory and by
experimentation, that cavitation is caused by the
transfer of the momentum from the fast moving bullet to the tissue which is
mostly comprised of incompressible liquid.
Persons hit by bullets have been reported to feel as if they have been punched
- pain comes later if the victim survives long enough to feel it. One of our readers
has kindly shared his first hand experience of being shot (in the arm) as
follows “Upon the bullet penetrating my flesh there was an immediate and
intense pain that may best be described as having a large gauge, extremely hot
wire piercing my arm. The sensation was so strong that I cried out in pain and
leaped rather high in the air while grasping the wound before my friend had
even realized what had happened.” In his view “any person being executed by
firing squad that has been shot in the heart would experience intense and
overwhelming pain before being rendered unconscious from cerebral hypoxia.”
The
British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1953) considered shooting as an
alternative to hanging, but rejected it on the grounds that "it does not
possess even the first requisite of an efficient method, the certainty of
causing immediate death." Those
giving evidence to the Commission frequently emphasised their belief that
execution should be rapid, clean and dignified.
When all
goes well, shooting can provide a quick death but there are many recorded
instances of it failing to kill the condemned person immediately. There are
also instances of people surviving their execution. It would seem that one of
the problems of the firing squad is that it is, typically, composed of
volunteers rather than professional executioners and it is a task that many
people would not find easy to perform when the time comes to actually squeeze
the trigger. Shooting is always a gruesome and bloody death.
