The situation of the death penalty in different countries is different, but the death penalty has a long history in human history, from the ancient eye-for-eye to torture and torture, in fact, the "efficient" death penalty is relatively progressive, and even more human rights awareness. After all, it's better to lose consciousness quickly than to struggle in pain.
Here are six types of death, and perhaps better options in the future.
1. Hanging
Many countries still use hanging. Hanging can be roughly divided into two types, rapid hanging is to let the prisoner fall from a high place, thus breaking the second cervical bone in the cervical vertebrae, instantly losing consciousness, and quickly causing brain death. The other is that the aorta of the neck is compressed, so that the blood vessels are occluded, and it struggles for a long time before the brain dies of hypoxia, as if hanging.
Once upon a time, the British government had developed an official formula for hanging, calculating the relationship between weight and rope length in order to execute them accurately and quickly. Although the United Kingdom has abolished the death penalty, the Great Britain Union countries that have not abolished the death penalty still use this table to calculate the length of the standard rope.
The problem with the British hanging is that if you want every prisoner to die comfortably, it must be arranged more accurately. The specifications of people are all different, and how to tie the rope to form a fast twist is an empirical problem. If he fails, he will trouble the prisoner to die again, or he will be allowed to experience slow hanging there.
2. Electric chair
The electric chair was invented to replace hanging, which many people at the time considered more humane than hanging. However, kemler, the first prisoner to die in an electric chair, died a tragic death.
According to Wikipedia, Kemler was turned on the first current, the voltage was 1000 volts, Kemler trembled, seventeen seconds later, still alive; soon, Kemler was turned on for the second time, the voltage was 2000 volts, the muscles in the body began to burn, but still alive. The third time he passed through the current, Kemler finally cried out for his life, his whole body was almost burned into charcoal, and his blood vessels ruptured and emitted a foul smell. A journalist who witnessed the execution said: "It was a terrible and frightening scene, far worse than hanging."
Before the first injection execution in 1982, all states in the United States gave priority to the use of electric chairs, and now only nine states still have it as a reservation option, not completely abolished. The inhumanity of electric chair people is still controversial to this day, some prisoners will fall out of their eyes and hang on the side of their cheeks after being tortured, or the hair of the corpse will be on fire, so that someone must stand aside with a fire extinguisher during the execution.
3. Injection
Quiet and low-key injection is a priority in the legal state of the United States today.
In 2005, after thousands of injection sentences had been carried out across the country, a medical team suddenly remembered, is such a sentence peaceful? They found that 44 percent of the inmates were probably conscious when they were dying. These inmates will first collapse throughout the body, unable to move or make a sound due to muscle spasms, and then die consciously in severe pain.
After further research, the scientists found that the injected poison was not effective in stopping people's hearts. Moreover, because of the shortage of penal agents, some states test new poisons on their own, but the results are not very good. Some prisoners "died for two hours" before they actually died. Therefore, in the future, the death penalty is likely to gradually ignore the injection method.
4. Guillotine
After the French Revolution, many people rushed to send the nobility to another world. But it is too difficult to cut with an axe, and not many people can really use it, so when they cut it down, people will not die immediately, but will spray the executioner with blood. At that time, the progress of the death penalty was slow, and many spare axes had to be prepared every time, and it was also troublesome to clean up afterwards.
Doctor Joseph-ignace Guillotin could not bear to look down and took the initiative to recommend the guillotine to the revolutionary masses: fast and effective. Under his propaganda, this instrument of torture was quickly popularized, and although he was not the inventor, later generations still affectionately referred to various guillotines as guillotine.
So, is the guillotine humane? Although at least it is much better than chopping with an axe, but if you want to know more details, there were reports in 1975 that mice would maintain consciousness for 9 to 18 seconds after their heads left the body, and the data obtained from other animal experiments was also within this range, so humans should not be far behind.
5. Execution by firing
What happens to the death of a shooting? In 1938, John Deering, a death row prisoner in the United States, agreed to receive an electrocardiogram before his execution. The results showed that the rate of death of the shooting was 15 seconds after the chest was shot, and the electrocardiogram showed a straight line.
In many countries, the death penalty is also carried out by firing squad, where the medical examiner anesthetizes the executed person, and then the bailiff shoots at the heart (shot from the back) or cerebellum (shot from the root of the right back ear), and about 10 to 20 minutes after the execution, the forensic doctor conducts an autopsy to confirm whether he is dead.
Even if the death penalty is carried out, the attitude of most countries to the death penalty is still to hope that it can be more humane and let the prisoner die without pain. What do the friends think?