Top 10 survivors of the death penalty. Real stories of people who survived the death penalty

1. Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time and she gave birth to a child in prison. When they put a rope around her neck and opened the hatch of the scaffold, she fell into the hatch, but did not die.

2. John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accessory to the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to hang, he was thrown into a hatch three times with a rope around his neck, but he survived all three times.

3. William Duell, along with 4 other criminals, was hanged after being accused of raping and murdering a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was supposed to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

4. Zoleyhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and an affair with a man. As is customary in the East, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this: a man is buried up to his waist in the ground and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleyhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was found to be alive.

5. Vincelao Miguel was arrested during the revolution in Mexico. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

6. John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by dropping with a rope through a hatch, but survived and lived a full life for some time.

7. Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged, thrown down the stairs with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral her coffin was opened and found to be breathing, after which she was sent to the hospital.

8. Joseph Samuel in 1801 committed several robberies and murders. He was part of a gang, all members of which were sentenced to death. On the day of execution, Joseph was hanged three times and three times he managed to survive, first his rope broke, then the rope jumped off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

9. Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after the death of her husband and gave birth to a child by him, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was discovered and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

10. Willie Francis killed a pharmacy owner when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was executed in the electric chair, Willy Francis screamed and shuddered, however, after a power outage, he remained alive. He was executed again exactly one year later.

Usually, the criminal who survived after the execution is not subjected to a second procedure. It is not for nothing that the key word in the verdict is “death”, which means the inevitability of the onset of retribution and the inevitability of the execution of the sentence.

In the past, the very fact that the criminal managed to stay alive after the execution of capital punishment was considered nothing more than God's providence, that is, it was considered a proof of innocence sent from above. Below are six real stories about people who were able to stay alive despite the law, even if only for a short time.

1. Man Franks

This is a photo of another execution, 1896. This guy is probably much less fortunate than Franks.

One of the Australian newspapers posted a note in 1872 about how the killer, nicknamed "Man Franks", survived his own execution due to the monstrous incompetence of the performers.

At first, the execution itself was delayed by several hours, as the sheriff found the scheduled time inconvenient. During the waiting time it rained and the wet rope prepared for the execution was taken to dry over the fire.

Because of this, the rope stopped slipping. Before throwing a noose around the neck of the convict, the executioner had to stick his leg into the noose and pull with all his might to move the tightly stuck knot. Then the would-be executioner tried to fix the noose around Franks' neck, but, despite all his efforts, he did not manage to do it as tightly as required by the rules.

In the end, a support was knocked out from under Frank, but after three minutes of unsuccessfully trying to suffocate, he began to twitch, asking to end his suffering and finish him off at last. And since his hands were as “tightly” tied as his neck, it was not difficult for him to pull himself up and, moving the rope from his throat, scold the organizers of the execution for their “hack-work”. Finally, one of the servants cut the rope, and the long-suffering victim of justice met the hard ground with a dull thud, since no one had thought to lay something soft on him.

Needless to say, after all that had been seen, no one wanted to finish the job, and Franks had his sentence commuted, replaced by imprisonment, and the executive power of the new monarchical elite of Fiji became the subject of ridicule all over the world.

2. Anna Green

In 1650, twenty-two-year-old Anna Green was a servant in the household of Sir Thomas Reed. She became pregnant from his grandson, but did not know that she was carrying a child in her womb. After 18 weeks, when Anna was grinding malt, she suddenly became ill. She had a miscarriage in the toilet. Terrified, the girl hid the corpse.

At that time, there was a law that any unmarried woman who concealed a pregnancy or a newborn was considered a child killer. Despite the fact that the midwives recognized the fetus as stillborn, Greene was sentenced to death by hanging in the courtyard of Oxford Castle.

During the last speech, she asked to condemn "the debauchery in the family in which she lived." She asked her friends to hang on her body to hasten her demise, and they did not refuse.

After the execution, the supposedly lifeless body was removed and taken to the anatomical theater for student training. But when the coffin was opened, the doctors discovered that the chest of the “corpse” made barely noticeable respiratory movements. They forgot their original purpose and began resuscitation through bloodletting, stimulating respiratory reflexes, and applying warm heating pads.

The public saw this as a sign from above and Green was pardoned. Taking the coffin with her as a souvenir, she settled in another town, got married and had a child.

3. Half-Hung Maggie

Cover of Alison Butler's The Hanging of Margaret Dixon

Maggie Dixon became pregnant while waiting for the return of her sailor husband, which was not at all a rosy situation for a woman in 1724. She, of course, tried to hide the pregnancy (concealment was punishable by law), but she failed and she was sentenced to death by hanging.

After the execution, her family managed to take the body away without giving it to the medicine butchers for dissection. While they were seeing Maggie off on their last journey to the cemetery, they heard a knock from inside the closed coffin. The resurrection of Maggie was perceived only as the will of God. So she became a celebrity and acquired the nickname "Half-Hanged Maggie." She lived another 40 years and to this day, not far from the place of her execution, there is a tavern named after her.

4. Inetta de Balsham

For harboring thieves, she was sentenced to death in August 1264. Sources say she was hanged at 9 am on Monday 16 August and left to hang out until the next morning. When the rope was cut, it turned out that she was still alive. Her windpipe was deformed in such a way that the knot could not completely restrict the access of air. Inetta's miraculous rescue brought her to the attention of King Henry III, who bestowed royal favor on her.

5. Romel Broom

The lethal injection was created as a humane, quick, painless and guaranteed means to take a person's life. However, Romel Broom proved that this is not entirely true.

In 2009, Romel was convicted of kidnapping, rape, murder and became the first criminal to survive a lethal injection.

The performers spent two hours trying to find a suitable vein for the IV. After cutting through Broom's entire body, they never found a vein, making the drug's effect unreliable. In the end, he was sent back to his cell with a week's reprieve from his death sentence.

During this time, Romel's lawyers began to prove that their ward experienced cruel and unusual treatment for prisoners during the unsuccessful execution. They managed to initiate a major movement aimed at changing the US law on the use of lethal injection, and Romel in this case is the main witness who cannot be executed. Broome is still alive and awaiting amnesty.

6. Evan McDonald

In 1752, Ewan Macdonald quarreled with Robert Parker and cut his throat, causing the latter to die. Macdonald was convicted of murder, sentenced to death by hanging on the city wall in the English city of Newcastle.

His "corpse" was sent to the same place as the bodies of the rest of the tortured criminals - to the anatomical theater of the local medical institution. In those days, doctors almost specifically hunted for such corpses, since they were the only practical “manuals” by which it was possible to legally study human anatomy.

This is probably why MacDonald was not destined to survive: when the surgeon who entered saw the dumbfounded convict sitting on the operating table, he, without thinking twice, grabbed a surgical hammer and completed the work of the executioner, breaking the criminal's skull. It is said that God's punishment overtook this doctor when his own horse mortally wounded him on the head with a hoof.

The death penalty implies the inevitability of parting with life. This measure is applied to people who commit the most heinous atrocities against other living beings. However, if a person survived, he will never be judged again. After all, few people are lucky enough to survive their own death. We have collected ten of the most interesting stories about people who managed to defeat the bony scythe herself.

This story took place at the end of the nineteenth century on the island of Fiji. The unreality of everything that is happening for a long time caused ridicule in society at the law enforcement agencies of the island.

Killer Frank, or as he was called the man Frank, was convicted of a number of murders. Hanging was chosen as a measure of restraint. But then a series of events occurred that led to a completely different outcome of the death penalty:

• the execution was delayed by the decision of the sheriff;
• the beginning of a downpour wet the prepared rope, and it had to be dried on a fire;
• since the rope had lost its ability to slide, the knot around the killer's neck was not tightened tight enough;
• as a result, Frank did not suffocate and, spewing curses, collapsed to the ground.

No one dared to carry out a second execution, and the killer was imprisoned for life.

The poor girl was sentenced to death by hanging at the end of the seventeenth century. Her only fault was pregnancy, which she did not know about. The miscarriage made her situation known to everyone, and she was convicted of concealing the pregnancy. The execution was successful, the doctors pronounced Anna dead. She was taken to the anatomical theater as material for teaching students, but they noticed signs of life and managed to resuscitate the woman.

Half-Hung Maggie

At the end of the seventeenth century, a simple girl, Maggie Dixon, became pregnant while waiting for her husband to sail. The concealment of such an unpleasant fact led to Maggie getting into the dock. Strict judges sentenced her to hanging, which was done. During the funeral, the girl's relatives heard a faint knock on the coffin lid, which was perceived as a sign from heaven. After these events, Maggie lived for more than forty years.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, according to harsh laws, Inette de Balchamps was sentenced to hang for assisting a gang of thieves. In the early morning they hanged her and left her body as a warning to the rest of the people for a day. When the girl was pulled out of the noose twenty-four hours later, she was alive. As a result, she was pardoned and released in peace.

The US has found a humane alternative to the electric chair and other types of executions. Until recently, the injection of a lethal drug was considered a 100% guarantee of a prisoner's death. But Romel Broom was the only person to survive after being executed by a lethal injection.

Convicted of a string of brutal murders, Broom was sentenced to death. But on the appointed day, the performers could not put him on a drip with the drug, as they did not find the right vein. After trying several times to insert a needle, they postponed the execution. But to this day, Romel Broom is incarcerated.

This story does not have such a rosy ending as the previous ones. Condemned to death by hanging, Evan Macdonald was executed in the city of Newcastle, he showed no signs of life. His body was sent to the anatomical theater for study. But the doctor who came in saw a man sitting on a wooden table instead of a corpse. What motivated the doctor is unknown, but he finished off Evan and calmly began to study his body.

Witch Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor received a death sentence for witchcraft. In the seventeenth century, such accusations always guaranteed the death penalty. The process was carried out in accordance with all the rules, but the girl remained alive. After that, she was pardoned, considering the resurrection as proof of innocence.

An Eastern woman should be a model of chastity and fidelity, but Zoleikhad managed to cheat on her husband and was sentenced to death. Unfaithful women in the East were stoned to death. They did the same with Zoleikhad, burying her in the ground up to her waist. But to the surprise of the doctors, the body brought to the morgue showed signs of life.

A sixteen-year-old teenager was convicted of murdering a man, the electric chair was chosen as a measure of restraint. The execution took place according to all the rules, but the young man remained alive. For a whole year he waited in the pardon chamber, but after this period, Willy was executed again.

Vincelao was an active participant in the Mexican Revolution, who was sentenced to death. As a result of the execution of the sentence, nine rifle volleys were fired at the young man. Surprisingly, Vinselao survived and even managed to escape.

Video: 10 death row survivors

Usually, the criminal who survived after the execution is not subjected to a second procedure. It is not for nothing that the key word in the verdict is “death”, which means the inevitability of the onset of retribution and the inevitability of the execution of the sentence. In the past, the very fact that the criminal managed to stay alive after the execution of capital punishment was considered nothing more than God's providence, that is, it was considered a proof of innocence sent from above. Below are five real stories about people who were able to stay alive despite the law, even if only for a short time.

Man Franks

One of the Australian newspapers posted a note in 1872 about how the killer named "Man Franks" survived his own execution due to the monstrous incompetence of the performers. At first, the execution itself was delayed by several hours, as the sheriff found the scheduled time inconvenient. During the waiting time it rained and the wet rope prepared for the execution was taken to dry over the fire. Because of this, the rope stopped slipping. Before throwing the noose around the neck of the convict, the executioner had to stick his leg into the noose and pull with all his might to move the tightly stuck knot. Then the would-be executioner tried to fix the noose around Franks' neck, but, despite all his efforts, he did not manage to do it as tightly as required by the rules. In the end, the support was knocked out from under Frank, but after three minutes of unsuccessfully trying to suffocate, he began to twitch, asking to end the suffering and finish him off at last. And since his hands were as “tightly” tied as his neck, it was not difficult for him to pull himself up and, moving the rope from his throat, scold the organizers of the execution for their “hack-work”. Finally, one of the servants cut the rope, and the long-suffering victim of justice met the hard ground with a dull thud, since no one had thought to put something soft on him. Needless to say, after all that had been seen, no one wanted to finish the job, and Franks had his sentence commuted, replaced by imprisonment, and the executive power of the new monarchical elite of Fiji became the subject of ridicule all over the world.

Anna Green

In 1650, twenty-two-year-old Anna Green was a servant in the household of Sir Thomas Reid. She became pregnant from his grandson, but did not know that she was carrying a child in her womb. After 18 weeks, when Anna was grinding malt, she suddenly became ill. She had a miscarriage in the toilet. Terrified, the girl hid the corpse.

At that time, there was a law that any unmarried woman who concealed a pregnancy or a newborn was considered a child killer. Despite the fact that the midwives recognized the fetus as stillborn, Greene was sentenced to death by hanging in the courtyard of Oxford Castle. During the last speech, she asked to condemn "the debauchery in the family in which she lived." She asked her friends to hang on her body to hasten her death, and they did not refuse. After the execution, the supposedly lifeless body was removed and taken to the anatomical theater for student training. But when the coffin was opened, the doctors discovered that the chest of the "corpse" makes barely noticeable respiratory movements. They forgot their original purpose and began resuscitation through bloodletting, stimulating respiratory reflexes, and applying warm heating pads. The public saw this as a sign from above, and Green was pardoned. Taking the coffin with her as a souvenir, she settled in another town, got married and had a child.

Inetta de Balsham

For harboring thieves, she was sentenced to death in August 1264. Sources say she was hanged at 9 am on Monday 16 August and left to hang out until the next morning. When the rope was cut, it turned out that ...

1 Elizabeth Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time, and she gave birth to a child while in prison. When they put a rope around her neck and opened the hatch of the scaffold, she fell into the hatch, but did not die.

2 John Henry George Lee

John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accessory to the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to hang, he was thrown into a hatch three times with a rope around his neck, but he survived all three times.

3 William Duell

William Duell, along with 4 other criminals, was hanged after being accused of raping and murdering a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was supposed to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

4 Zoleihad Kadhoda

Zoleyhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and an affair with a man. As is customary in the East, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this, a man is buried up to his waist in the ground, and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleyhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was found to be alive.

Vincelao Miguel was arrested during the Mexican Revolution. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

6 John Smith

John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by dropping with a rope through a hatch, but survived and lived a full life for some time.

7 Anna Green

Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body, and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged, thrown down the stairs with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral her coffin was opened and signs of breathing were found, after which she was sent to the hospital.

8 Joseph Samuel

Joseph Samuel in 1801 committed several robberies and murders. He was part of a gang, all members of which were sentenced to death. On the day of execution, Joseph was hanged three times, and three times he managed to survive, first his rope broke, then the rope jumped off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

9 Maggie Dixon

Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after her husband's death and gave birth to a child by him, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was discovered and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

10 Willie Francis

Willie Francis killed a pharmacy owner when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was executed in the electric chair, Willy Francis screamed and shuddered, but after the power outage, he remained alive. He was executed again exactly one year later.