Capital Punishment Timeline

What is capital punishment? Capital Punishment by definition is the legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime (Oxford Dictionaries). Capital Punishment has been around since at least the Eighteenth Century B.C. (Part 1: History of the Death Penalty/Death Penalty Information Center; DPIC 2015) and since then has gone through many changes. Back then capital punishment was used for a wide variety of crimes in addition the methods of capital punishment used varied a great deal. In colonial Virginia for instance, you could be put to death for some minor offenses such as killing chickens, horses or dogs without permission, trading with Indians and stealing grapes. A few years later it was changed for fear that no one would

In colonial times the methods ranged from beatings, drowning, boiling and burning at the stake. The most commonly used method was hanging. Some hangings were from a tree where the prisoner was taken there in a cart which also was the means they were suspended by, this method was used in the Salem witch trials (Capital Punishment Timeline, n.d.). According to The American Female Hanged 1608-1637, women liked to look their best for their executions. If they could, they would get a new outfit for the occasion either made or bought. The women that were poor could get clothes from family, friends, townsfolk or even the sheriff would get them an outfit. I have not come across any literature regarding if men practiced the same usual habits as the women regarding attire before execution. There are four different hanging methods that were used. They were the short drop, the standard drop, the long drop and the sudden suspension. In the use of the short drop there really isn’t much of a drop, less than a foot or from a tree. The standard drop was like a 4-5 foot drop which wasn’t enough force to break their necks, so death was usually by strangulation. In the long drop the method factored in the prisoner’s weight divided by a number to get the drop. The sudden suspension was kind of like a reverse hanging, instead of the prisoner falling through the trap, weights were dropped and the person was raised into the air and hanged that way. The long drop was the most commonly used and the one that was the sole form permitted in the original constitution according to (Hanged by the neck until you are dead, 2015). The equipment needed were the gallows, noose, hood,