132 articles
Gallows
Gallows: raised frames with a crossbeam and noose used for execution by hanging, the most common method in Britain and over half of US executions; Tyburn, long drop, 1868 abolition.
Gary Gilmore
Gary Mark Gilmore (1940–1977), American convicted murderer in Utah who refused to appeal his 1976 death sentence, chose firing squad, and was executed January 17, 1977, the first U.S. execution after the Furman moratorium; subject of Mailer's The Executioner's Song.
Gas chamber
Gas chamber: airtight execution room using lethal gas, historically hydrogen cyanide from cyanide and acid. Adopted by Nevada in 1921; about 600 US executions before 1972; last known, Walter LaGrand, Arizona, 1999.
George Stinney
George Junius Stinney Jr. was an African American boy from Alcolu, South Carolina, executed in 1944 at age 14, the youngest person executed in the United States that century.
Guillotine
Guillotine: beheading machine adopted by France in 1792 on Joseph-Ignace Guillotin's proposal, designed by Antoine Louis; France's sole execution method until abolition by the 1981 loi Badinter.
Hamida Djandoubi (حميدة جندوبي)
Hamida Djandoubi (حميدة جندوبي), a Tunisian laborer living in Marseille, was guillotined at Baumettes prison on 10 September 1977, the last execution in France and Western Europe.
Hanged, drawn and quartered
Hanged, drawn and quartered: the English statutory penalty for male high traitors from the Treason Act 1352 until the late 18th century, involving dragging on a hurdle, partial hanging, disembowelling, beheading, and quartering; abolished with quartering in 1870.
Hanging
Hanging is suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck, used historically and currently as a judicial execution method (Iran, Japan, Taiwan) and a common suicide method; death mechanisms include asphyxia, cerebral vessel occlusion, and cardiac inhibition.
Hangman's knot
The hangman's knot, also called the hangman's noose, is a running noose with multiple coils, historically used for judicial hanging; in forensics, its position on the neck largely determines the mechanism of death.
Hannah Ocuish
Hannah Ocuish, also spelled Occuish, was a girl of Pequot and African American descent, believed to have had an intellectual disability, hanged at age 12 for murdering a 6-year-old girl.
Helen Prejean
Helen Prejean, also Sister Helen Prejean, is an American Catholic nun (Sisters of St. Joseph) and death penalty abolitionist; author of Dead Man Walking (1993), spiritual advisor to Louisiana death row inmates, and advocate behind Catholic Catechism changes.
Impalement
Impalement: execution by driving a stake through the body, Old Persian uzmayāpati kar. Attested in Neo-Assyrian warfare and law, Achaemenid Persia (Bisotun), and Vlad III Dracula's 15th-century Wallachia; forensics also uses the term for perforating rod injuries.
James Hanratty
James Hanratty (1936-1962) was hanged at Bedford Prison for the A6 murder of Michael Gregsten and rape and shooting of Valerie Storie in 1961. His 2002 appeal failed on DNA evidence, though the CCRC had cited non-disclosure.
Joe Arridy
Joe Arridy (1915-1939), intellectually disabled Pueblo, Colorado man wrongfully executed for the 1936 murder of Dorothy Drain after a coerced confession; posthumously pardoned by Governor Bill Ritter on January 7, 2011.
John C. Woods
John Clarence Woods (1911-1950) was the US Army master sergeant from Wichita, Kansas, who hanged ten Nazi leaders at Nuremberg on October 16, 1946, and seven Japanese war criminals in Tokyo in 1948; his claimed 347-execution career and the botched short-drop hangings remain disputed.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), French physician and Paris deputy who proposed machine decapitation in 1789; the guillotine, designed by Antoine Louis, was named for him, though he did not invent it and died naturally in 1814.
Kevin Cooper (prisoner)
Kevin Cooper is an American prisoner sentenced to death in 1985 for the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their daughter Jessica, and Christopher Hughes in San Bernardino County, California. He has.
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is an execution method using intravenous drugs, first used in Texas in 1982 and now the default method in nearly all US death penalty jurisdictions.
Linda Carty
Linda Carty, British national born 1958 in Saint Kitts, on Texas death row since 2002 for the 2001 kidnapping-murder of neighbor Joana Rodriguez; case contested over defense counsel and consular notification.
Lingchi (凌迟)
Lingchi (凌迟), or "death by a thousand cuts," was imperial China's most severe execution, codified from the Liao dynasty onward for crimes like rebellion and parricide, and abolished on 24 April 1905 by Wu Tingfang and Shen Jiaben.
List of death row inmates in Japan
Death row inmates in Japan: people under finalized death sentences held in penal facilities, 107 as of October 2024. Covers hanging, secrecy, Hakamada's acquittal, and executions of Shiraishi and Takami.
List of death row inmates in the United States
The list of death row inmates in the United States, also called people on death row, covers the roughly 2,004 prisoners with active death sentences as of January 2026.
List of death row inmates in the United States who have exhausted their appeals
Death row inmates in the United States who have exhausted their appeals are prisoners with no remaining court route to challenge their sentence, tracked by the Death Penalty Information Center.
List of executions in Singapore
List of executions in Singapore: judicial hangings at Changi Prison for murder and drug trafficking under the Criminal Procedure Code and Misuse of Drugs Act; totals fell from over 70 a year in the mid-1990s, then rose to 17 in 2025, with rare clemency.
List of last meals
List of last meals: documented final meal requests of condemned prisoners, a death row ritual studied by folklorists and criminologists; Texas ended special requests in 2011 after Lawrence Brewer's refused order.
List of most recent executions by jurisdiction
Most recent executions by jurisdiction: recorded 2025 executions in 17 countries totaled 2,707, led by Iran (2,159+), Saudi Arabia (356+), and the USA (47, Florida 19); China's figures are secret.
List of people executed by electrocution
List of people executed by electrocution: United States electric chair executions from William Kemmler's first in 1890 to Nicholas Todd Sutton in 2020; 4,484 recorded historically, 163 since 1977, now authorized in nine states.
List of people who died by hanging
List of people who died by hanging: documented judicial executions by hanging, from ~9,320 US cases since 1622 and 10,935 in England and Wales 1735–1964 to Nuremberg 1946 and the last US hangings (1993–1996).
List of people who were beheaded
List of people who were beheaded, covering judicial decapitation from Waltheof (1076) and Anne Boleyn to Charles I, Lord Lovat, and guillotine victims like Pelletier, plus modern cases including Saudi executions, Samuel Paty, and ISIS victims.
List of people who were executed
List of people who were executed: notable executed individuals (Kendall, Kemmler, Gee Jon, Joyce, Gilmore, Hasan) plus 2025 global execution statistics: 2,707 executions in 17 countries, highest since 1981.