Execution block

“ But this we know, that if that man is executed at eight, as the clocks now stand, HE IS MURDERED, just as much as he would be, if, the evening before, he had been forcibly strangled in his cell! The felon's life is sacred until the hour arrives when justice has ordained him to die; and if the life be taken sooner, that is murder. Who, we ask, would be the responsible parties in this case, not perhaps to an earthly, but surely to a higher tribunal? On the other hand, if the execution does not take place at eight, it is highly questionable whether the criminal can be executed at all. ”

“ Let us suppose one of the most glaring violations of the constitution; a bill of attainder of ex post facto law, for example, passed by a State; and that the State judiciary proceeds to conviction of the party prosecuted. Let us suppose, that this Court, claiming an appellate jurisdiction, forbids the execution of the party; but the State Court orders its judgment to be executed, and it is executed, by putting to death the prisoner. His life cannot be recalled: that is beyond the reach of human power; can you prosecute the judges or the officer for murder? ”

“ Of course, the scaffold and rope are arranged, and the drop decided, beforehand. I calculate for three minutes to be occupied from the time of entering the condemned cell to the finish of life’s great tragedy for the doomed man, so I enter the cell punctually at three minutes to eight. In order that my action in hanging a man may be legal, it is necessary that I should have what is known as an “authority to hang,” which is drawn up and signed by the Sheriff, and handed to me a few minutes before the time for the execution. ”

“ When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to mete out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of his being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only rest in astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case. ”

“ It may certainly afford matter of speculation that in civil causes there should be such a variety of writs of execution to recover a trifling debt, issued in the king's name, and under the seal of the court, without which the sheriff cannot legally stir one step; and yet that the execution of a man, the most important and terrible task of any, should depend upon a marginal note. ”

“ In cases of high treason, other barbarities were practised upon the bodies of the criminals, but these were frequently,28 and in cases of persons of distinction, generally, remitted. Indeed, even the hanging was dispensed with in these latter cases; and hence we read of the execution of great prisoners of state, male and female, by beheading, which, strictly, is a manner of death unknown to the laws of England, except as an incident to the principal penalty by hanging or burning. ”

“ To effect this, it seems that the Execution should be as soon as possible after the Commission and Conviction of the Crime; for if this be of an atrocious Kind, the Resentment of Mankind being warm, would pursue the Criminal to his last End, and all Pity for the Offender would be lost in Detestation of the Offence. Whereas, when Executions are delayed so long as they sometimes are, the Punishment and not the Crime is considered ”

“ The sentence in the case of a woman was, that she be burned to death, and in the case of a man, that he be drawn to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until he be dead. [8] To mitigate the sufferings of felons at the stake, the executioner usually fastened one end of a cord to the stake, and bringing this cord around the neck of the woman, pulled it tightly the moment the torch was applied, and continued the strain until life was extinct, which, unless the cord was sooner burnt asunder, generally happened before the condemned had suffered much from the intensity of the flames. ”

“ I cannot believe, however, that if the sentence of a citizen to death is plainly illegal, this Court would allow that citizen to be executed on the grounds that his lawyers had 'waived' plain error. An illegal execution is no less illegal because a technical ground of 'waiver' is assigned to justify it. ”

“ I have had two of these experiences, and as people should always learn by their failures, have turned them to practical account as lessons for the future. The first was the attempted execution of John Lee, which resulted in the Home Office making an investigation into the arrangements for executions in the different gaols, and eventually to their issuing an official plan for the drop, which has been used in all prisons where scaffolds have since been erected. ”

“ He proposed a resolution declaratory that capital punishment ought to bear no relation to the rank of the culprit; that when a criminal is condemned to death, for any crime whatever, the mode of execution should be the same whether he were peer or peasant. ”

“ If we ultimately retain capital punishment in our code, the limitation of the charge of murder which we have suggested will cause the notion of deliberate murder and the scaffold to be associated together in men’s minds. They are not so associated at present; for, besides the chances of escaping conviction, it is notorious that condemned convicts rarely abandon hope even to the very last. Let us strive to get rid of the mockery of pronouncing solemn sentences of death in cases which are unfit for execution. ”

“ Public executions are very simply carried out. The criminal is taken to the spot on a horse, and when he arrives, is bound, and made to kneel on the ground over a hole which is to receive his head. The executioner, who uses the “ken” above named, arranges the culprit’s head in the proper position, and, apparently without any effort, decapitates the man with a blow. The old traveller Purchas very neatly expresses the mode of execution by a single word. ”

“ Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that, practically, it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited ex·tent be violated? ”

“ Should our legislature think proper to revive the practice, in capital cases, of heading up the criminal in a barrel, filled with nails, driven inward, a sort of inverted cheval de frize, and rolling him down hill, I have often thought the more elevated corner of our Common would be an admirable spot for the commencement of the execution, were it not for interrupting the practice of coasting, during the winter; by which several innocent persons, in no way parties to the process, have been very nearly executed already. ”

“ It's not the least use, on the eve of an execution, to attempt to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to the executioner. ”

“ Will it be believed, in this age of improved contrivances, moral and physical, that the Governor and Council of our Commonwealth have actually refused, to rush between the sentence and the execution, and save this egregious scoundrel from the gallows! They have solemnly decided, not to interfere with the operation of that ancient law of this Commonwealth, which decrees, that he, who kills his fellow man, with malice prepense, shall be hanged, by the neck, till he is dead! ”

“ Besides, the reports of the courts of the United States furnish ample evidenee of the constant practice of bringing suits against executors and administrators, and to cite these cases would be a work of supererogation, because it would be to demonstrate what cannot be denied. Nor does it seem to have been thought, in any instance, that judgments thus rendered could not be executed; and certainly an execution is necessary to the beneficial exercise of the jurisdiction. An execution is said to be the end of the law, and it gives to the successful party the fruits of his judgment. ”

“ It is a rule here to admit of smaller presumptions in all crimes which affect the Government, than in other cases; and the only difference they make between a crime fully proved, and one more doubtful, is, that, in the first case, the execution is in broad daylight; whereas, when there are doubts of the prisoner’s guilt, he is only put to death privately. [176] The State Inquisitors have keys to every apartment of the Ducal palace, and can, when they think proper, penetrate into the very bed-chamber of the Doge, open his cabinet, and examine his papers. ”

“ They could not very well think of such punishment as a curb to more murders, for even they could not help seeing that the beheading and quartering of offenders had no such effect. The legal execution has no such effect today, a fact which any fair-minded man will recognize after proper investigation. ”

“ The fact of big petitions being presented in one case, while no effort is made in another case with similar features, naturally leads uneducated people to think that there is uncertainty and injustice about the whole affair.
There is still one other respect in which I think that our law with reference to murder and the death penalty ought to be altered, and that is with regard to the length of time allowed to elapse between sentence and execution. ”

“ Neither the statute nor due process of law required that the accused should, upon the affirmance of the judgment, be sentenced anew by the trial court to suffer the punishment of death, or that he should be present when the day was fixed by the appellate court for carrying the original sentence into execution. The judgment prescribing that punishment was not vacated by the writ of error; only its execution was stayed pending proceedings in the appellate court. ”

“ But a method of execution that is “barbarous,” Rhodes, 452 U. S., at 345, or “involve [s] torture or a lingering death,” Kemmler, 136 U. S., at 447, does not become less so just because it is the only method currently available to a State. If all available means of conducting an execution constitute cruel and unusual punishment, then conducting the execution will constitute cruel and usual punishment. Nothing compels a State to perform an execution. It does 28
GLOSSIP v. ”

“ The seizure effected by the sheriff or his officer, under this writ, of the property of the debtor, is what is popularly known as “the putting-in” of an execution. The seizure should be carried out with all possible despatch. The sheriff or his officer must not break open the debtor’s house in effecting a seizure, for “a man’s house is his castle” (Semayne’s Case [1604] , 5 Coke Rep. 91) ; but this principle applies only to a dwelling-house, and a barn or outhouse unconnected with the dwelling-house may be broken into. ”

“ The writ to enforce the judgment of a court of law is called an execution. It is directed to the sheriff or other proper executive officer, and requires him to seize and sell the defendant's property or, as the case may be, to arrest and imprison him, to turn him out of possession of certain lands, or to take some other active step against one who has been adjudged in the wrong, in order to right the wrong, as the judgment may command.
A judgment for equitable relief is not ordinarily the subject of an execution. ”

“ It is therefore proposed that no execution should be made until the number of persons which government thinks fit to try is completed. When the whole is at once under the eye, an examination ought to be made into the circumstances of every particular convict; and six, at the very utmost, of the fittest examples may then be selected for execution, who ought to be brought out and put to death on one and the same day, in six different places, and in the most solemn manner that can be devised. ”

“ The principle assumed here is, that an execution which issues after the death of a party is void, because it directs the property of a dead man to be sold, and because the representative ought to have a day in court to contest it. ”

“ To limit the operation of an execution now, to that which it would have had in the year 1789, would open a door to many and great inconveniencies, which Congress seems to have foreseen, and to have guarded against, by giving ample powers to the Courts, so to mould their process, as to meet whatever changes might take place. ”

“ The fundamental question being thus decided for the retention of capital punishment, the mode of execution came next into discussion, and on the 3rd of June, 1791, the following article was proposed:—
"Every criminal condemned to death shall be beheaded [aura la tête tranchée] ." ”

“ N. Y. § 528, which provides that, 'when the judgment is of death, an appeal to the court of appeals stays the execution, of course, until the determination of the appeal;' and it was also held that, under the statute providing for execution by electricity, a warrant which directed that execution be done by putting defendant to death in the mode, manner, and way, and at the place, by law prescribed and provided, was sufficient. ”

“ Whenever there is a series of executions, without reprieves, the number of murders decreases, and on the other hand, after a period in which several persons have been tried for murder and acquitted, or reprieved after sentence, the number of crimes appears to increase. I do not think that this rule can be demonstrated forcibly and convincingly by a reference to the mere numbers of murders, convictions, reprieves, and executions during the past few years, because there are many considerations which bear upon the significance of an execution or reprieve ”