Top 10 Banned Capital Punishments

Have you ever wondered what it might feel like to have pieces of your body sliced off with a knife, one tiny bit at a time? Plenty of people who lived in China between 900 AD and 1905 had the chance to find out. The form of capital punishment known as lingchi, or slow slicing, was exactly that, a form of torture and execution where the condemned found themselves being chopped up, piece by piece, until they ultimately expired from their wounds. Executioners were sometimes known to allow their victims occasional doses of opium to dull the agony, but this small bit of compassion probably didn’t do much to alleviate the horrific pain being inflicted.

This next form of capital punishment is probably best known for being the method by which the religious figure Jesus Christ was executed, according to the Christian Bible. This was actually a common form of punishment within the Roman Empire and elsewhere, with thieves, zealots and political figures alike being condemned to this fate. The act of crucifixion is simple, but excruciating, as the victim is bound to a cross with their hands and feet nailed to the intersecting pieces of wood. The victim would then hang upon the cross until death, which likely occurred due to asphyxiation, exhaustion, dehydration and/or blood loss.

Claustrophobics beware. The act known as premature burial isn’t always accidental, and was previously used as a form of execution from Ancient Rome all the way through the Nanking Massacre. There were differing ways a condemned person could be buried alive, whether it was the German tribal method of burying a bound victim face down in mud, to the medieval Italian process of burying the condemned upside down. No matter how premature burial is carried out, the victim usually expires either from the crushing weight laid upon them from the earth, or from eventual suffocation, due to lack of air.

This next form of capital punishment was made infamous during the time of the Salem witch trials, in particular the case of one Giles Corey. The English-born Salem resident was swept up as part of the witch hysteria, and had stones of increasing size placed upon his chest, in order to force out a confession. As the legend goes, Corey’s only words were “more weight” to his executioners, after which the man finally expired from the immense pressure upon his chest. Corey’s wasn’t the only case of death by pressing, however. This manner of execution proved quite popular in Asia, where it was usually performed by large elephants. Ouch.

England, Scotland and Japan were just three countries that used this method of execution, whereby a victim would be boiled to death by scalding hot liquid. Tar, oil, water and other liquids were all used for this purpose, and were usually contained within a large cauldron. The cauldron was heated with a large fire, which would raise the temperature to the boiling point. Sometimes the victim was placed in the pot at the beginning; other times, he was dumped in after the boiling started. In either case, the result was extreme burns that resulted in a slow, messy and unfathomably painful death.

The modern horror icon Jigsaw might be jealous of the startlingly brutal form of capital punishment known as death by sawing. This manner of execution differs from guillotines or beheading in that, traditionally, the victim is secured upside down and severed manually. This can be done either at the waist, similar to what one might see in a magician’s act, or starting at the groin area for a particularly nasty cut. Variations on death by sawing are said to have been used in America, Asia, Europe and beyond. However, there are some who believe the practice is equivalent to an ancient urban myth and may never have actually been used in real life.

Officially abolished in England in 1870, this once-commonplace method of execution takes its name from the quartering of its victim into four separate parts. This can be achieved by tying the victim’s hands and feet each to four separate horses running in opposite directions, or in the more extended fashion known as being hung, drawn and quartered. Here, the victim is dragged by horse to the place of execution, whereupon they are hung before the body is chopped into the aforementioned four pieces. This form of capital punishment can be seen, albeit in a much less graphic form, at the end of “Braveheart,” after Mel Gibson’s William Wallace is captured by King Edward I.

This one is another relic associated with witchcraft hysteria, although it was certainly practiced before then. Although most of the alleged witches executed in Salem were condemned to hanging, European witches tended to be burned at the stake. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, pushed for this penalty in 1572, resulting in thousands of men and women being burned at the stake throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, burning was also used for sexual offenses, treason, heresy, incest or homosexuality. American witches may have avoided the fire, but several cases of slave revolt in the colonies were punished by death by burning.

Many of the methods of execution we’ve discussed on our list thus far all seem very far away in terms of context, but sadly beheading is one which is still very real in today’s society. This act of separating a victim’s head from their body may be banned as a form of capital punishment in North America, but beheading is still used today in Saudi Arabia as a punishment for rape, murder, robbery, repeated drug offenses or sorcery. Additionally, graphic live videos of beheadings have been seen as recently as 2015, released to the public by jihadist ISIL groups as a form of propaganda.

Before we reveal our number one pick, here are a few dishonorable mentions.
- Stoning
- Firing Squad

Although Washington state and New Hampshire both offer the option of hanging to their prisoners as a method of execution, this method has largely fallen out of favor in the United States in recent years. In fact, since the 1996 hanging of Delaware native Billy Bailey, most of the nation’s prison systems either opt for the electric chair or lethal injection instead. Hanging itself has been in practice for centuries, and is defined as the suspension of the victim by their neck until death. This usually occurs by strangulation, or from the victim’s neck snapping due to the sudden drop and taut pull of the rope.