execution by hanging is still used in a few states today. It is a precise execution because if the drop is a little off death becomes slow and agonizing. This makes it a less desirable means for execution. Two states still use the firing squad method, in which the condemned is hooded, strapped into a chair, and a target is pinned on the chest. Five marksmen take aim and fire (NCADP). During the twentieth century, electrocution has been the most widely applied form of execution in the United States, and still used in eleven states. The prisoner is placed in the death chamber and strapped into the chair with electrodes strapped to the head and legs. When the chair is activated the body strains and jolts as the intensity of electricity is raised or lowered. It is not known how long the prisoner retains consciousness. In some cases, as with the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama, it takes more than one jolt of electricity to kill the prisoner. An eyewitness illustrates the "barbaric ritual" in which it took three charges at thirty second intervals and ten minutes before doctors pronounced Mr. Evans dead (NCADP). The gas chamber method begins with strapping the prisoner into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is then sealed and cyanide is dropped into the acid to create a lethal gas. As with electrocution, suffocation by inhalation of a lethal gas is not always a quick and clean way of death. The latest mode of infliction of the death penalty is lethal injection. Some believe that this method is more humane (NCADP). The U.S. Court of Appeals stated that there is "substantial and uncontroverted evidencethat execution by lethal injection poses a serious risk of cruel, protracted deathEven a slight error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own asphyxiation" (NCADP). As with the other methods of execution, death by...
