Applications of the Death Penalty: Decapitation

Decapitation is most commonly used in the world today by criminal gangs or insurgents. For example, the drug cartels of Mexico or the Taliban of Afghanistan often execute victims/captives in this way.

But here we are only concerned with where this method of capital punishment is on the statute books. After being one of the most popular global modes of judicial killing in the past, only three countries now legally behead people.  They are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

However, only Saudi Arabia regularly does so. Seventy-six people died under that nation's scimitar in 2011; so far another twenty-eight have been decapitated in 2012.

Beheading has a long history.  It was a mode of execution favored by both the ancient Romans and Greeks for their own citizens. This was carried with the former in particular into all of their conquered nations.

Some already used it. I know from my own country's history that decapitation was certainly known amongst the early British Celts.  It remains in fragments from stories like the Mabinogion, where both Gawain and Bran faced the headman's axe. 

Yet for many in the West, this method of the death penalty will be forever associated with France. Until 1981, when capital punishment was abolished there, the guillotine (pictured left) was the primary (and latterly only) weapon of execution. That machine's infamy had already been well established during the French Revolution, when thousands were killed under its blade.

But by the turn of the 21st century, it was Saudi Arabia which took the lead. No fancy contraptions of death there. The victim merely kneels before an executioner and dies under the swing of a double-handed scimitar.

Throughout history there have many methods of beheading the victim. The toughness of the neck muscles rely upon some kind of sharp, and preferably heavy, blade; not to mention some force behind its use in severing the person's head.

Monarchs and military personnel tended to request a sword held by a muscular man. It was sharp and seemed more noble, like dying on a battlefield.  The alternative was an axe. 

Some countries, such as Finland and Sweden, devised one especially for decapitations. It had a blade which steeply inclined towards the point all the way from the handle. The executioner's axe was heavy enough to require even the strongest man to use both hands to wield it.

The cause of death is shock and anoxia. The sudden drop of blood pressure should instantly bring unconsciousness, though there have been many horror stories to the contrary.

Any chicken farmer will tell you that, on slaughter day, the birds flap for a while without their heads. 'Running around like a headless chicken' comes from that very phenomenon.

There was even one who lived for eighteen months without his head. Mike the Headless Chicken became somewhat of a side-show exhibit in that condition.

But what about human beings? It's an unsettling notion that, as long as the brain stem is intact, we can live without our brains. Baby Nicholas Coke is just one infant who did just that. Born with anencephaly, he reached his second birthday at least.

Usually the point about beheading, as a method of applying the death penalty, is that there is no coming back. It's fast, apparently painless and the individual is killed in seconds. But what has haunted some observers is that all of this is not necessarily so.

It's a well-known reaction that eyes and mouth will move in a disembodied head for around six seconds afterwards. That's around the time when the metabolism runs out along with the oxygen laden blood.

As far as I can ascertain, there is no historical record of individuals staggering around afterwards, as is so common in chickens. Bodies have certainly been observed twitching, as they are pushed into the caskets, but nothing more.

However, apparent lucidity has been noted in the heads. Is it possible that people can be aware that they have been decapitated?  Are they capable of feeling pain?

There are plenty of reports from the French Revolution (when between 16,000 and 40,000 were beheaded within a short time) that suggested consciousness after the guillotine. Two of the most famous stories reflect the stature of the scientist at their center.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the Father of Chemistry, attended the execution of his servant, then rushed to pick up his head. He asked the man to blink if he understood and the victim duly blinked.

Later the chemist himself was executed on the same guillotine (and exonerated of all crimes the following year). He reportedly told an assistant that he would blink for as long as consciousness remained.  Reportedly, he was able to do so for up to twenty seconds after decapitation.

More recently, scientists conducted experiments on rats at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. Their findings were published under the heading Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’. It added credence to earlier observations about lucidity after decapitation.

EEG readings continued in the 13–100 Hz frequency band for around four seconds after beheading had taken place. This is the electrical brain energy associated with cognitive thought. In short, the rats had a short window in which they could have been self-aware following decapitation.

On June 28th 1905, the murderer Henri Languille was decapitated in Place Bel Air, Orléans, France. As with all victims of capital punishment in that country, at that time, the guillotine was used to sever his head from his body.

What makes this different to all of the others is the experiment, which was carried out immediately afterwards.

Dr. Gabriel Beaurieux was present and he was interested in the debate about whether lucidity continued after decapitation. Once Henri had been beheaded, the doctor rushed over to the guillotine.

His subsequent report was published in Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle (1905) and stated that he did not have to position Languille's head.  It had fallen naturally against the stem of his neck.

Dr Beaurieux waited for six seconds, while the usual reflex contractions were exhibited in the movement of the victim's eyelids and lips. As soon as they ceased, the doctor firmly spoke up, "Languille!" 

Henri's eyes opened and he looked straight at the doctor.  His pupils focused. Beaurieux wrote, 'I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me.' He took great care to distinguish that from the vague expression common in those dying of natural causes.

After a few seconds, Henri's eye-lids slowly closed. The doctor once again called his name and the process repeated. Beaurieux stated that, this second time, the gaze appeared even more penetrating.

But once Henri's eyelids had once again partially shut, he could not be brought to awareness with further calls.  He was finally dead.  Beaurieux estimated that lucidity had remained, in this case, for between 25 and 30 seconds after decapitation.

The trouble with compiling this list is the sheer number of actions, which are considered to be felonies in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. 

All three could possibly behead someone for murder, but there is much more besides.  Some of them may be surprising to the unwitting tourist.  Ignorance is no excuse under any of their penal codes.

In Iran, drinking alcohol, theft, homosexuality, taking/trafficking drugs, adultery, opposing the government and cursing the prophet Mohammed may result in decapitation.  Those 'crimes' are alongside incest, rape, armed robbery and white collar crime such as fraud.

Saudi Arabia will behead people for all of the above, adding in other capital crimes such as terrorism, home invasion, sorcery and witchcraft too.

I've not been able to find an exhaustive list of capital offenses in Yemen at all. This is a nation which is very secretive about its penal code.  The majority of executions have been for murder, though adultery, apostasy and drug offenses can also carry the death penalty.

Yemen has executed 152 people between 2007 and 2011, according to Amnesty International. There is a lot that can be said about that, including reference to juveniles and those with mental illness being amongst their number.  But we are focusing here on the death penalty through decapitation.

Despite being on the statute books, no-one has actually been beheaded in Yemen recently.  The victims of capital punishment tend to be shot in the heart instead. Similarly, Iran is more likely to hang its judicial prisoners.

As far as I've been able to ascertain, no-one has ever been decapitated through legal court proceedings in Yemen. It exists as a potentiality only.

In Iran, on May 13th 2003, a man was beheaded in the Sistan Baluchestan province. He'd been found guilty of triple murder and rape, as part of a gang. The other seven members were hanged instead. It's unclear why this individual was singled out for an alternative, and very rarely used, method of applying the death penalty in this country.

In Saudi Arabia, the victim usually does not know that they are about to be executed until immediately before it occurs. Often, they may not even realize that they have been sentenced to death.

In March 2004, Victor Corea, Ranjith de Silva, Sanath Pushpakumara and Sangeeth Kumara were arrested for armed robbery.  The four Sri Lankan nationals were found guilty in October of the same year.

The men believed that they had been given a prison sentence; and the Sri Lankan embassy was given no reason to assume otherwise. Saudi Arabia does not publicize such information, even in diplomatic circles, to thwart international backlash from the like of Amnesty International.

On February 12th 2007, Human Rights Watch spoke with Ranjith de Silva. He appeared confident that the Saudi government were about to apply clemency and pardon the four men. It was reported that they each believed they would be out of prison imminently.

The interest of the activist group was in the fact that the men had been badly beaten while awaiting trial; and they had not been given access to lawyers.  They didn't have the chance to pursue the case.

Seven days later, the four Sri Lankan men were given tranquilizers. This, and what followed, is what occurs in all decapitations in Saudi Arabia.

They were taken from their prison cells and driven to a car-park, adjacent to a busy market square. In their case it was in the capital city of Riyadh, but people are executed in similar locations all over the country.

These are always public spectacles and always take place immediately after noon prayers.

A broad plastic covering is placed on the ground and the condemned person is forced to kneel upon it. Their hands and feet are tied behind their backs. They will always have been blind-folded and often are dressed in a white robe.  Sometimes a concession is given in allowing the victim to wear his or her own clothes. They will always be bare-foot.

Prayers continue through loudspeakers, as the crowds gather to watch.  The victim kneels facing Mecca.

After a few minutes have passed, an Interior Ministry officer steps onto a small platform and reads out the charges.

Meanwhile, a police officer will hand a scimitar to the executioner.  It is 3.6ft - 3.7ft (1100mm - 1200mm) long and kept solely for this purpose.  The headsman has a few practice swipes in the air to gauge the weight (and to warm up his arm muscles), then touches the tip of the blade against the victim's back.

This is their cue to sit up straight.  Within the next instant, the scimitar sweeps down and, if done correctly, beheads the victim in one go.

Granted there are not as many failures with the guillotine as with other methods, but it does still occasionally go wrong. Decapitation with axe and sword can certainly be botched.

This is just a small selection from several centuries of botched beheadings around the world.

• May 27th 1541: Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (London, England). The old lady was visibly terrified, as she climbed the steps to the executioner's platform. Her nerves were not made any better when the headsman totally missed her neck and embedded his axe into her shoulder. Margaret panicked. It took ten or eleven attempts to sever Margaret's head from her neck. During this time, the executioner was forced to chase her with his axe, as she fought against him. She eventually fled the platform, but he caught up with her. Each of those attempts had sliced more of her without killing her, until the very last one.
• July 15th 1685: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth (London, England). The first blow with the axe merely grazed the back of James's head, missing his neck entirely. He had refused a blindfold and turned around now to stare at Jack Ketch the executioner. This was unnerving, but the axe still came down a second time. This was hardly any more effective, only partially cutting into James's neck. Jack panicked and threw down his axe, asking someone from the crowd to kill the Duke instead. He was threatened with death himself, if he didn't get on with it. It took another five or six blows with the axe to finally end James's suffering. Even then his neck wasn't severed. A knife had to be used to cut the last skin and sinews.
• August 7th 1890: Anna Månsdotter (Kristianstad, Sweden).  Whether the headsman misjudged his swing or Anna moved, the axe's blade did not pass cleanly through her neck. Instead it hit diagonally, slicing from her brain stem to her mouth. Anna's lower jaw was left connected to her neck, as her body dropped.
• June 17th 1939: Eugen Weidmann (Versailles, France). An inexperienced executioner hadn't properly assembled the guillotine. When Eugen was tipped on the bascule (moveable board upon which the victim lay), it would not slot into position. This meant that his head wasn't forward enough to fit into the lunette (hole through which his neck was held into place).  An assistant quickly grabbed him by the hair and yanked him forward. The top edge of the bascule was forced upwards against his throat, threatening to garotte him even as the blade was falling. As soon as Eugen's head was severed, there was nothing stopping the bascule tilting back upwards. The executioner swiftly pushed Eugen's body into the casket to stop it being propelled onto the ground. Meanwhile the crowd stormed past the police guard and dipped their handkerchiefs into Eugen's blood. This became the last public execution in France for that reason.
• December 5th 1950: Werner Gladow (Frankfurt, Germany). The guillotine blade got jammed as it entered Werner's neck. He was left screaming in agony, but very much not dead, as engineers fought to free it. The blade also stuck on the second attempt. Werner was finally put out of his misery the third time the guillotine was used on him.