Firing Squads
Countries which use shooting today.
72 countries use shooting as the method of execution, either exclusively
or for some classes of crime or criminal
(e.g. military personnel are shot whist civilians are hanged as
in Egypt and Libya) China carries out most of the
worlds executions although precise annual numbers are unknown.
A total of 315 executions by shooting were recorded in 1996, there
were undoubtedly many more (particularly in
China).
These were in Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, Dubai, Guatemala, Iran,
Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan & Vietnam.
China
China has the death penalty for 68 crimes including murder, drug
trafficking, rape, re-selling VAT receipts,
pimping, habitual theft, stealing or dealing in national treasures
or cultural relics, publishing pornography, selling
counterfeit money economic offences such as graft, speculation
and profiteering and even killing a panda.
Amnesty International recorded 2,496 death sentences and 1,791
executions in 1994 and 3,612 death sentences
and 2,535 executions in China in 1995.
Amnesty International feels that these figures fall far short of
the real numbers of death sentences and executions.
China does not publish statistics about the death penalty, saying
these are a state secret.
"It's killing the chicken to frighten the monkey," one jurist said,
quoting a Chinese proverb.
Executions are often carried out immediately after a public sentencing
rally and the criminal’s family is made to
pay for the bullet.
The prisoner’s arms are shackled behind them and they are made
to kneel down before receiving a single bullet
fired at close range into the back of the head or neck by a soldier
or policeman or by a bullet fired into the heart
from behind using an automatic rifle.
Chinese laws do not specifically state the site of execution grounds
and shootings are carried out at military target
ranges and along river banks and on remote hill sides, the prisoners
being transported in open lorries from the
sports stadiums where they were sentenced.
Condemned criminals are not executed inside prisons because it
is regarded as inhumane for other inmates to hear
the sound of gunfire.
The number of executions usually rises steeply in the run-up to
national festivals and during highly publicised crime
crackdowns when officials like to show that social order works
in China.
In a typical mass public execution in December 1995 13 men and
women convicted of murder and highway robbery
were shot after the Court dismissed their appeals
Chinese television showed the nine men and four women being paraded
at a sports stadium in front of a crowd of
more than 10,000 before being taken to the execution ground on
a nearby hillside.
Frequently the kidneys, hearts and corneas are removed from the
dead prisoners and used in transplants at local
hospitals.
"Execution is one of the indispensable means of education," China’s
paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, once said.
During 1997 China has begun experimenting with lethal injection
and this may possibly replace shooting in due
course.
Iran
In the years following the 1979 revolution Iran shot hundreds,
if not thousands, of criminals reaching a peak in the
early 1980’s. Their crimes included murder, drug trafficking, adultery,
prostitution, armed robbery, political
violence and religious offences. Typically those who were to be
shot were lined up in groups seated on the ground
along a wall and blindfolded. They were each shot by a Revolutionary
Guard standing in front of them and using an
automatic rifle. Most reported Iranian executions in the nineteen
nineties have, however, been by hanging.
Nigeria
Nigeria uses both hanging and shooting and on Saturday July 22nd
1995 executed 43 convicted armed robbers at
the Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos before a hushed crowd
of around a 1,000 people.
It was the largest number of executions in one day in Nigeria for
decades and was intended to crack down on a
recent upsurge in violent crime.
The prisoners, some of whom had been on death row for as long as
16 years, were tied to stakes at the Kirikiri
shooting range before 12 a man firing squad of Nigerian soldiers
marched in from behind the prison walls and
opened fire. The soldiers dressed in camouflage and with black
shoe polish on the faces used semi-automatic
weapons to execute the convicts in three groups of 12 and one of
seven.
The executions began at 9:30 a.m. and ended at 11 a.m. Three doctors,
including a woman, certified the deaths, and
an Irish Roman Catholic priest and a Moslem Imam witnessed them.
Armed robbers are frequently sentenced to be shot and at one time
in the northern state of Kaduna the Military
Governor thought that shooting gave the prisoner too quick a death
and decided that their agony should be
prolonged by ordering the firing squad to aim at the feet and legs
and then progressively higher up with each volley
until the prisoner died.
Thailand
Uniquely Thailand uses a single executioner with a stand mounted
machine gun to shoot murderers and drug
traffickers. The prisoner is tied to a stake and has a white cloth
screen in front of them hiding the machine gun.
They are hooded and the screen is drawn back to allow the executioner
to aim the gun at their heart. When it is
ready the screen is re-positioned in front of the prisoner and
their hood removed. A volley of heavy calibre bullets
completes the job. Executions are however very rare.
Utah
The American state of Utah is the only state to have used the firing
squad in recent times. Only Utah and Idaho
allow this method and it is doubtful whether either state will
use it again.
On 17 January 1977 Gary Mark Gilmore became the first person to
be executed in the U.S. for twelve years after
putting up a strenuous campaign to be allowed to die. He chose
shooting. Under Utah law the condemned man had
the choice of shooting by firing squad or hanging. He was executed
by six volunteers in the old canning factory in
the prison grounds using .303 rifles only five of which had live
ammunition, the sixth containing a blank round so
that the firing squad would not know who had fired the fatal shots.
He was tied to a chair and had a white target pinned over his heart.
After the death warrant had been read to him
he was asked if there was anything he wanted to say and uttered
the famous line "Lets do it"
His execution renewed the capital punishment process in America
and was graphically described in the Norman
Mailer book and subsequent film "The Executioner’s Song"
19 years later John Taylor became the second person to suffer the
same fate.
Taylor, 36, was convicted of the 1988 rape and strangulation of
11-year-old Charla King and was duly executed on
26th January 1996 at 12:03 a.m. Mountain Time.
One of the nine media witnesses, Paul Murphy of KTVX-TV Salt Lake,
described the scene saying we "saw this
very large man strapped to a chair. His eyes were darting back
and forth".
He was strapped to the chair by his hands and feet and lifted his
chin for Warden Hank Galetka to secure a strap
around his neck and place the black hood over his head.
At 12:03 a.m., on the count of three, the five riflemen standing
23 feet away fired at a white cloth target pinned over
Taylor's heart. Blood darkened the chest area of his navy blue
clothing, and four minutes later, a doctor
pronounced him dead.
Very little blood spilled into the pan under the chair's mesh seat.
As the volley hit him Taylor’s hands squeezed up, went down, and
came up and squeezed again His chest was
covered with blood."
The prison doctor came in, cut holes in the hood and examined Taylor's
pupils to verify he was dead.
"The image I have when I close my eyes is of his chest heaving
upward after he was shot," said witness Kevin
Dale Stanfield.
"The execution was completed and John Albert Taylor was pronounced
dead at 12:07," said Ray Wahl, director of
field operations at the Utah State Prison.
"It went like clockwork, just like we rehearsed." prison warden
Hank Galetka said.
"There was no hesitation at all," "Taylor went to his death with
steely determination even though only hours
before he had to be given medication because his stomach was "doing
flip-flops."
Military firing squads
As mentioned earlier the firing squad has always been the preferred
method of military execution and it remains so
in many countries today.
In Britain this was also the case and during World War 1 at least
346 soldiers were shot for desertion and
cowardice. Many of these were young recruits who were probably
suffering from shell shock. There has been a
long, but to date, unsuccessful campaign to get posthumous pardons
for them.
Desertion ceased to carry the death penalty after 1930.
However the last execution by firing squad took place on the rifle
range in the Tower of London on August 24th
1941 when Josef Jakobs, a German, convicted of spying was shot.
As was the usual practice he was tied to a chair
with a target pinned over his heart and shot by a six man firing
squad from the Scots Guards regiment. One of their
rifles contained a blank round.
How shooting kills
Shooting can be carried out by a single executioner who fires from
short range at the back of the head or neck as is
the case in China and the USSR (before abolition). The intention
of shooting at short range is to destroy the vital
centres of the medulla (lower brain stem), as happens when a captive
bolt is used for slaughtering cattle.
The traditional firing squad is made up of three to six shooters
per prisoner who stand or kneel opposite the
condemned who is usually tied to a stake. Normally the shooters
aim at the chest, since this is easier to hit than the
head. A firing squad aiming at the head produces the same type
of wounds as those produced by a single bullet, but
bullets fired at the chest rupture the heart, great vessels, and
lungs so that the condemned person dies of
hemorrhage and shock. It is not unusual for the officer in charge
of the firing squad to have to give the prisoner a
"coup de grace" - a pistol shot to the head to finish them off
after the initial volley has failed to kill them.
A bullet produces a cavity which has a volume many times that of
the bullet. Cavitation is probably due to the heat
dissipated when the impact of the bullet boils the water and volatile
fats in the tissue which it strikes. According to
Dr. Le Garde, in his book "Gunshot Injuries", it is proved both
in theory and by experimentation, that cavitation is
caused by the transfer of the momentum from the fast moving bullet
to the tissue which is mostly comprised of
incompressable liquid.
Persons hit by bullets feel as if they have been punched - pain
comes later if the victim survives long enough to feel
it.
The British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1953) considered
shooting as an alternative to hanging, but
rejected it on the grounds that "it does not possess even the first
requisite of an efficient method, the certainty of
causing immediate death". Those giving evidence to the Commission
frequently emphasised their belief that
execution should be rapid, clean and dignified.
When all goes well shooting can provide a quick death but there
are many recorded instances of it failing to kill the
condemned person immediately. There are also instances of people
surviving their execution. It would seem that
one of the problems of the firing squad is that it is, typically,
composed of volunteers rather than professional
executioners and it is a task that many people would not find easy
to perform when the time comes to actually
squeeze the trigger. Shooting is always a gruesome and bloody death.
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