Legal execution

“ In other cases, the concern is not that the state might execute someone who is innocent, but rather that it will violate constitutional or other legal rights and protections in the course of administering a death sentence. [79] These cases include challenges concerning the risk of severe and needless pain and suffering due to the method of execution, [80] the individual’s competency to be executed, [81] or the presence of a religious advisor at the time of death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where sentence of death for murder is to be executed in accordance with that Act, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of State, as early as he conveniently can, to publish in such manner as he thinks fit the time and place fixed for the execution. ”

“ It has been done. There is a case of a judge who sentenced a man to death and allowed the execution to take place, notwithstanding that he—the judge—had actually seen the murder committed by another man. ”

“ The conviction of a man, you honor, does not necessarily prove that he is guilty. Your law books are filled with instances where men have been carried to the scaffold and after their death it has been proven that their execution was a judicial murder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a man commit murder by the hand of another, he shall be tried in the same way as in the cases previously supposed, but if the offender be a citizen, his body after execution shall be buried within the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are of opinion that the justice of an execution consists, not in the extent of the sufferer's crime, or in his having merited punishment, or in the wholesome and salutary effect which that example is likely to produce upon other evil-doers, but hold that it rests solely in the robe of the judge, the height of the bench, and the voice of the doomster? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is yet another manner of killing which the Law punishes with the utmost severity, which is resisting an officer, civil or criminal, in the execution of his office (arresting a person) so that he be slain, yet though he did not produce his warrant, the offence will be adjudged murder. ”

“ The five together, or, by an additional act, the majority of them, satisfactory evidence. of guilt appearing, were to sentence the culprit to death, or such lesser punishment as the offense might seem to deserve. In case of lesser punishment, "no particular law directing such punishment" was necessary. In case of death, "the kind of death" was left to "the judgment and discretion" of the court, execution to be forthwith done on their sole warrant, the owner to be indemnified at the public charge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The substantial punishment imposed by each statute is death by hanging. The differences between the two, as to the manner in which this sentence of death shall be carried into execution, are trifling. What are they? By the old law, execution must be within 25 days from the day of sentence; by the new, within 28 days. By the old, confinement prior to execution was in the county jail; by the new, in the penitentiary. By the old, the sheriff was the hangman; by the new, the warden. ”

“ The fact that an unforeseeable accident prevented the prompt consummation of the sentence cannot, it seems to us, add an element of cruelty to a subsequent execution. There is no purpose to inflict unnecessary pain nor any unnecessary pain involved in the proposed execution. ”

“ Technically, the word is used in law in the execution of a deed (its formal signing and sealing) , an execution (see below) by the sheriff’s officers under a “writ of execution” (the enforcement of a judgment on a debtor’s goods) ; and execution of death has been shortened to the one word to denote Capital Punishment (q.v.) .
Civil Execution may be defined as the process by which the judgments or orders of courts of law are made effectual. In Roman law the earliest mode of execution was the seizure, legalized by the actio per manus injectionem, of the debtor as a slave of the creditor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every person, who, by wilful and corrupt perjury, or subornation of perjury, shall procure the conviction and execution of any innocent persons, shall be deemed and adjudged guilty of murder, and upon conviction thereof, shall suffer the punishment of death. ”

“ But taking into consideration that the public eye would be offended by so dismal an exhibition, I am disposed to agree that your sentence shall be put into execution in the usual way, but unaccompanied by the statutory attendant of the punishment of the crime of murder—viz., that your body should be publicly dissected and anatomised, and I trust that if it ever is customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes. ”

“ Bills of attainder were acts of Parliament whereby sentence of death was pronounced against the accused. Courts of justice were employed only to register the edict and carry the sentence into execution. ”

“ The lawful execution of a small number of human beings, condemned to death by a fully qualified court of justice according to the strict letter of a penal law which had previously been solemnly proclaimed, and which each one of the victims was perfectly free to avoid transgressing—to call such an execution a hundred times more abominable than the horrible act of the parents who cast their children into the flaming arms of Moloch! ”

“ The Act directs that persons condemned for murder shall be executed on the next day but one after sentence, unless Sunday intervenes, when the execution shall take place on Monday.
Bodies to be given to the Surgeons’ Company at their Hall or where else the Company may appoint, with a view to dissection; or the judge may appoint that the body be hanged in chains (not alive as proposed by J. R. and Ollyffe) . In no case whatsoever is the body of a murderer to be buried except after dissection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Since the deterrent efficacy of punishments in general, including the death penalty, is quite insignificant for the born criminals, who are insensible and improvident, the rare cases of execution will certainly not cure the disease of society. ”

“ 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. ”