Hanging Matters 2 : Chads, Lynch Mobs and other Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Florida is famous for Jeb's hanging chads that didn't quite see Dubya home in 2000, it was the crooked computer voting, over-enthusiastic de-registration of voters, and old fashioned intimidation that won through in the end.

And though lynching is the typical summary justice (and injustice) methodology of the frontiers and later of the deep south, hanging has not been much favoured in judicial killings in the USA in modern times.

Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in 1977, keeping his ole blue eyes in good shape, which was a cue for a song. This was the first such killing after a hiatus of around 10 years starting a couple of years after we stopped stringing people up here in Blighty.

Others fried, choked or were put down with poison. There are some interesting historical facts and figures here.

Texas' greatest serial killer Dubya was a real TexasStar but proud little brother Jeb has had a frustrating time trying to keep his tally up. Both have both been outstanding supporters of the death penalty in principle. But after all Jeb's trials and tribulations with electoral machinery it is difficult not to sympathise with his difficulties now with the mechanical tools of his torturer's trade. The poor lamb slammed his gubernatorial opponent for killing too few people, but has ended up killing even less.

First, a prisoner got a voltage that made his ears and indeed the whole of the rest of his head burn like a KKK cross. So they had to stop doing that. And now tragically Angel Diaz took a full 34 minutes to die from toxic chemicals designed to burn up his vital organs inside his body. They had to kill him twice. And now they've had to stop using that method too.

If they are going to persist with all this depraved killing in Florida they may yet have to bring back the rope after all. There is I think a man in England somewhere who has built an excellent business making flat pack scaffolds for export to the Middle East and other judicial death zones. He may be delighted to find that he can now go west too.

The death budget could also be for the drop. Just now it is estimated that a judicial killing in the sunshine state costs between five and six times the amount of life imprisonment.