Hanging

Hanging

Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and is the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging is in Homer's Odyssey. Hanging is also a method of suicide.

The past and past participle of hang in this sense is hanged, not hung.

Methods of judicial hanging

There are numerous methods of hanging in execution which instigate death either by cervical fracture or by strangulation.

Short drop

File:Biskupia Gorka executions - 14 - Barkmann, Paradies, Becker, Klaff, Steinhoff (left to right).jpg

Execution of guards and kapos of the Stutthof concentration camp on 4 July 1946 by short-drop hanging. In the foreground are the female overseers: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Gerda Steinhoff (left to right)

The short drop is a method of hanging in which the condemned prisoner stands on a raised support such as a stool, ladder, cart, or other vehicle, with the noose around the neck. The support is then moved away, leaving the person dangling from the rope.

Suspended by the neck, the weight of the body tightens the noose around the neck, effecting strangulation and death. This typically takes 10–20 minutes.

Before 1850, the short drop was the standard method of hanging, and it is still common in suicides and extrajudicial hangings (such as lynchings and summary executions) which do not benefit from the specialised equipment and drop-length calculation tables used in the newer methods.

Pole method

File:Hromadná poprava Srbů.jpg

Mass execution of Serbs by the Austro-Hungarian army in 1916

A short-drop variant is the Austro-Hungarian "pole" method, called Würgegalgen (literally: strangling gallows), in which the following steps take place:

1. The condemned is made to stand before a specialized vertical pole or pillar, approximately Template:Convert in height.
2. A rope is attached around the condemned's feet and routed through a pulley at the base of the pole.
3. The condemned is hoisted to the top of the pole by means of a sling running across the chest and under the armpits.
4. A narrow-diameter noose is looped around the prisoner's neck, then secured to a hook mounted at the top of the pole.
5. The chest sling is released, and the prisoner is rapidly jerked downward by the assistant executioners via the foot rope.
6. The executioner stands on a stepped platform approximately Template:Convert high beside the condemned. The executioner would place the heel of his hand beneath the prisoner's jaw to increase the force on the neck vertebrae at the end of the drop, then manually dislocate the condemned's neck by forcing the head to one side while the neck vertebrae were under traction.

This method was later also adopted by the successor states, most notably by Czechoslovakia, where the "pole" method was used as the single type of execution from 1918 until the abolition of capital punishment in 1990. Nazi war criminal Karl Hermann Frank, executed in 1946 in Prague, was among approximately 1,000 condemned people executed in this manner in Czechoslovakia.

Standard drop

File:Execution of Henry Wirz.jpg

The execution of Henry Wirz in 1865 near the U.S. Capitol; Wirz was given a standard drop, which did not break his neck

The standard drop involves a drop of between Template:Convert and came into use from 1866, when the scientific details were published by Irish doctor Samuel Haughton. Its use rapidly spread to English-speaking countries and those with judicial systems of English origin.

It was considered a humane improvement on the short drop because it was intended to be enough to break the person's neck, causing immediate unconsciousness and rapid brain death.

This method was used to execute condemned Nazis under United States jurisdiction after the Nuremberg Trials, including Joachim von Ribbentrop and Ernst Kaltenbrunner.Template:Nonspecific In the execution of Ribbentrop, historian Giles MacDonogh records that: "The hangman botched the execution and the rope throttled the former foreign minister for 20 minutes before he expired." A Life magazine report on the execution merely says: "The trap fell open and with a sound midway between a rumble and a crash, Ribbentrop disappeared. The rope quivered for a time, then stood tautly straight."

Long drop

File:KetchumDecapitated.jpg

Sepia-tone photo from a contemporary 1901 postcard showing Tom Ketchum's decapitated body following a botched execution by long-drop hanging. Caption reads "Body of Black Jack after the hanging showing head snapped off."

File:Karl Morgenschweis prays for condemned prisoner.jpg

Execution of an unidentified Nazi war criminal after World War II

The long-drop process, also known as the measured drop, was introduced to Britain in 1872 by William Marwood as a scientific advance on the standard drop. Instead of everyone falling the same standard distance, the person's height and weight were used to determine how much slack would be provided in the rope so that the distance dropped would be enough to ensure that the neck was broken, but not so much that the person was decapitated. Careful placement of the eye or knot of the noose (so that the head was jerked back as the rope tightened) contributed to breaking the neck.

Prior to 1892, the drop was between four and ten feet (about one to three metres), depending on the weight of the body, and was calculated to deliver an energy of Template:Convert, which fractured the neck at either the 2nd and 3rd or 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae. This force resulted in some decapitations, such as the infamous case of Black Jack Ketchum in New Mexico Territory in 1901, owing to a significant weight gain while in custody not having been factored into the drop calculations. Between 1892 and 1913, the length of the drop was shortened to avoid decapitation. After 1913, other factors were also taken into account, and the energy delivered was reduced to about Template:Convert.

weight of prisoner	1892 drop(ft & inches)	Ft.lbs energy developed	1913 drop(feet & inches)	Ft.lbs energy developed
105 and under	8'0"	840	-	-
110	7'10"	862	-	-
115	7'3"	834	8'6"	1003
120	7'0"	840	8'4"	1000
125	6'9"	844	8'0"	1000
130	6'5"	834	7'8"	996
135	6'2"	833	7'5"	1001
140	6'0"	840	7'2"	1003
145	5'9"	834	6'11"	1003
150	5'7"	838	6'8"	999
155	5'5"	840	6'5"	995
160	5'3"	853	6'3"	1000
165	5'1"	839	6'1"	1004
170	4'11"	836	5'10"	992
175	4'9"	831	5'8"	991
180	4'8"	839	5'7"	1005
185	4'7"	848	5'5"	1002
190	4'5"	839	5'3"	993
195	4'4"	844	5'2"	1008
200 and over	4'2"	833	5'0"	1008

The decapitation of Eva Dugan during a botched hanging in 1930 led the state of Arizona to switch to the gas chamber as its primary execution method, on the grounds that it was believed more humane. One of the more recent decapitations as a result of the long drop occurred when Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was hanged in Iraq in 2007. Accidental decapitation also occurred during the 1962 hanging of Arthur Lucas, one of the last two individuals to be put to death in Canada.<ref>

As suicide

Suicide by hanging

Hanging is a common suicide method. The materials necessary for suicide by hanging are readily available to the average person, compared with firearms or poisons. Full suspension is not required, and for this reason, hanging is especially commonplace among suicidal prisoners (see suicide watch). A type of hanging comparable to full suspension hanging may be obtained by self-strangulation using a ligature around the neck and the partial weight of the body (partial suspension) to tighten the ligature. When a suicidal hanging involves partial suspension the deceased is found to have both feet touching the ground, e.g., they are kneeling, crouching or standing. Partial suspension or partial weight-bearing on the ligature is sometimes used, particularly in prisons, mental hospitals or other institutions, where full suspension support is difficult to devise, because high ligature points (e.g., hooks or pipes) have been removed.[19]

In Canada, hanging is the most common method of suicide,[20] and in the U.S., hanging is the second most common method, after self-inflicted gunshot wounds.[21] In the United Kingdom, where firearms are less easily available, in 2001 hanging was the most common method among men and the second most commonplace among women (after poisoning).[22]

Those who survive a suicide-via-hanging attempt, whether due to breakage of the cord or ligature point, or being discovered and cut down, face a range of serious injuries, including cerebral anoxia (which can lead to permanent brain damage), laryngeal fracture, cervical spine fracture (which may cause paralysis), tracheal fracture, pharyngeal laceration, and carotid artery injury.[23]

As human sacrifice

There are some suggestions that the Vikings practiced hanging as human sacrifices to Odin, to honour Odin's own sacrifice of hanging himself from Yggdrasil.[24] In Northern Europe, it is widely speculated that the Iron Age bog bodies, many who show signs of having been hanged were examples of human sacrifice to the gods.[25]

Medical effects

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Anoxic brain injury following a hanging. The loss of grey white matter differentiation and small ventricles due to brain swelling are visible. A hanging may induce one or more of the following medical conditions, some leading to death:

• Closure of carotid arteries causing cerebral hypoxia[1]
• Closure of the jugular veins
• Breaking of the neck (cervical fracture) causing traumatic spinal cord injury or even unintended decapitation
• Closure of the airway[1]

The cause of death in hanging depends on the conditions related to the event. When the body is released from a relatively high position, the major cause of death is severe trauma to the upper cervical spine. The injuries produced are highly variable. One study showed that only a small minority of a series of judicial hangings produced fractures to the cervical spine (6 out of 34 cases studied), with half of these fractures (3 out of 34) being the classic "hangman's fracture" (bilateral fractures of the pars interarticularis of the C2 vertebra).[26] The location of the knot of the hanging rope is a major factor in determining the mechanics of cervical spine injury, with a submental knot (hangman's knot under the chin) being the only location capable of producing the sudden, straightforward hyperextension injury that causes the classic "hangman's fracture".

According to Historical and biomechanical aspects of hangman's fracture, the phrase in the usual execution order, "hanged by the neck until dead", was necessary.[1] By the late 19th century that methodical study enabled authorities to routinely employ hanging in ways that would predictably kill the victim quickly.

The side, or subaural knot, has been shown to produce other, more complex injuries, with one thoroughly studied case producing only ligamentous injuries to the cervical spine and bilateral vertebral artery disruptions, but no major vertebral fractures or crush injuries to the spinal cord.[27] Death from a "hangman's fracture" occurs mainly when the applied force is severe enough to also cause a severe subluxation of the C2 and C3 vertebra that crushes the spinal cord and/or disrupts the vertebral arteries. Hangman's fractures from other hyperextension injuries (the most common being unrestrained motor vehicle accidents and falls or diving injuries where the face or chin suddenly strike an immovable object) are frequently survivable if the applied force does not cause a severe subluxation of C2 on C3.

John Ogilvie, who in 1615 was hanged and disembowelled after torture for his refusal to give up the Catholic faith and convert to Protestantism In the absence of fracture and dislocation, occlusion of blood vessels becomes the major cause of death, rather than asphyxiation. Obstruction of venous drainage of the brain via occlusion of the internal jugular veins leads to cerebral oedema and then cerebral ischemia. The face will typically become engorged and cyanotic (turned blue through lack of oxygen). Compromise of the cerebral blood flow may occur 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.[28]

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 for some period after the brain can no longer be resuscitated. The time of death 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.[citation needed]

Sphincters will relax spontaneously and urine and faeces will be evacuated. 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. If broken, it often means the person has been murdered by manual strangulation.[citation needed]