h was not immediate, and the doctor had to check twice before pronouncing him dead, two minutes after the firing squad had let go its lethal volley (The Execution Protocol). The second is hanging until dead. Prior to the British refinements of the hanging procedure in the nineteenth century, the punishment consisted of looping the rope around the condemned man's neck and dropping him from a height so that the rope tightened, causing a slow death--in some cases of up to ten minutes have been reported to pass by before death comes-- by asphyxiation. Activist opposes this form of execution because of its apparent cruelty. The condemned person does not die immediately and suffers greatly. Before losing consciousness, the strangled victim face turns purple as he struggles for air. His eyes bulge, his tongue hangs out, and he loses control of his sphincter (The Death Protocol). Later in 1888, the British government reports details of a method of hanging designed to cause instant death through the dislocation of the vertebrae. Yet this too had its down side. Miscalculations about the length of rope to the weight of the victim caused decapitation in most cases (The Death Protocol). Another idea for the death penalty was the gas chamber. D. A. Turner, a major in the United States Medical Corps, invented the gas chamber in 1924. Turner began studying the effects of gas warfare during World War I. The lethal gas shells had a variety of names, but the result was always the same. Breathing in cyanide gas paralyzes the heart and lungs. The victim becomes giddy. Opposes to the death penalty dislike this form of execution because of the apparent distress of the victim. After the victim has passes his initial state of panic, he begins to have severe headaches, followed by chest pains. Respiration becomes impossible, so that as the victim struggles for breath, their eyes pop, and their tongues hang thick and swollen from their drooling m...
