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Methods of inflicting the death penalty have ranged from stoning in biblical times, crucifixion under the Romans, beheading in France, to those used in the United States today: HANGING, ELECTROCUTION, GAS CHAMBER, firing squad, and LETHAL INJECTION.
Electrocution:
The electric chair was introduced in the USA in 1888, because they thought that it was more human than hanging.
The execution: after the condemned federal prisoner has been tied to the chair, copper electrodes are fixed to his head and to a leg. Powerful discharges in short intervals between 500 and 2000 volts cause the death.
Although the sentenced should be unconscious after the first discharge, sometimes this doesn't happen; often internal organs keep on working, so that more discharges are necessary.
Willie Francis: black 17-year-old boy, condemned in 1946, survived to the first attempt to kill him. An eyewitness said: \"I saw the executioner switching on and his lips swelling, his body tense and strained. I heard the electrician telling to his colleague to send in more electricity when I saw Willie Francis still alive, and the colleague said he couldn\'t send more electricity. Then Willie cried: \'Stop it, let me breath!' Then he said he had felt his head and his left leg burning, he had jumped against the strings and he had seen blue, pink and grey dots\". He was executed one year later, successfully.
Gas Chamber:
This execution method was introduced in the USA in the twenties, inspired by the use of poisonous gas during the World War One and of the oven as a suicide method.
The prisoner is tied to a chair in an airtight room where cyanide is released. The sentenced dies by asphyxiation after 8 - 10 minutes.
Lethal injection:
Introduced in Oklahoma and Texas in 1977; the first execution was in Texas on December 1982. It involves an intravenous continuous injection of a lethal dose of barbiturate in combination of a paralysing chemical agent. In Texas a combination of three substances is used: a barbiturate which makes the prisoner unconscious, a substance which relaxes his muscles and paralyses the diaphragm to stop the movement of the lungs and another one which makes his heart stop (surviving time 6 - 15 minutes).
Some people say this is the most humane execution method.
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