Should Saddam Have Been Guillotined?

Backdrop

Amid all the hoopla surrounding the execution of Saddam Hussein by way of hanging, I recently found myself in a heated debate with a few friends over Saddam's fate. For the sake of discussion, we decided to agree that he should die. Then came the interesting question of "how". And quite surprisingly (to me at least), they insisted he should have been beheaded, or more precisely, guillotined!

So I'm putting it out there... Let's forget that the guillotine has been "retired" decades ago. I decided to have the online community weigh on this hypothetical mean of execution. And mind you, I placed a wager on what kind of response (yes or no) I would be having. So let the games begin :)

The History of the Guillotine

It's worth pointing out that the practice of beheading is all mixed up in class distinctions. In ancient Greece, Xenophon singled it out as a noble punishment. The Romans, who did horrible things to common criminals, also saved decapitation for nobler folk. They called it capitis amputatio.

William the Conqueror brought beheading to England, where it was, again, set aside for nobility -- for people like Lady Jane Grey and Anne Boleyn. When the English beheaded the lower classes, it was only to finish off a victim who'd first been tormented in ways too nasty to talk about here.

The guillotine is a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which is suspended a heavy blade. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head. The device is noted for long being the main method of execution in France and, more particularly, for its use during the French Revolution. It became infamous (and acquired its name) in France at the time of the French Revolution, but inventors were devising beheading machines at least as early as 1300. Sixteenth-century Scots used a device they coyly named the Maiden, and England's old Halifax Gibbet greatly resembled the French guillotine. However, the French developed the machine further and became the first nation to use it as a standard execution method.

The device derives its name from Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French doctor and member of the Revolutionary National Assembly, on whose suggestion it was introduced in 1789. Dr. Guillotin proposed the use of a mechanical device to carry out the death penalty. The basis for his recommendation is believed to have been his perception that it was a humane form of execution, contrasting with the methods used in pre-revolutionary, ancien régime (old regime) France. He suggested the use of beheading machines so that "the privilege of decapitation would no longer be confined to nobles, and the process of execution would be as painless as possible". The story has it that, in 1738, shortly before his birth, Guillotin's mother witnessed a poor wretch being publicly tortured to death on the wheel. She was so stricken by the horror of it that she went into immediate labor. Guillotin's mother may have been an early influence on his later advocacy of the beheading machine. In any case, one was built, tested on dead bodies, and turned loose on common criminals in 1792. On April 25th, highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine.

In the case of decapitation, it sometimes took repeated blows to sever the head completely. The condemned or the family of the condemned would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to provide for a quick and relatively painless death. The guillotine was thus perceived to deliver an immediate death without risk of misses. Furthermore, having only one method of execution was seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was adopted as the official means of execution on 20 March 1792. The guillotine was from then on the only legal execution method in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, which entailed execution by firing squad.

When Guillotin himself died it wasn't on his invention as myth would have it, but instead of natural causes on May 26, 1814. The descendants of Dr. Guillotin have since changed their surname because of the association with a method of execution.

The last public guillotining was of Eugen Weidmann, who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on June 17, 1939, outside the prison Saint-Pierre rue Georges Clemenceau 5 at Versailles, which is now the Palais de Justice. The last execution in France was of Hamida Djandoubi and took place on September 10, 1977. The death penalty in France was abolished in 1981.


The guillotine outside of France
Just as there were guillotine-like devices in countries other than France before 1792, similarly other countries, especially in Europe, employed this method of execution into modern times. A notable example is Germany, where the guillotine is known in German as Fallbeil ("falling axe"). And although the guillotine has never been used in the United States as a legal method of execution (it had been considered in the 19th century before introduction of the electric chair), in 1996 Georgia state legislator Doug Teper proposed the guillotine as a replacement for the electric chair as the state's method of execution to enable the convicts to act as organ donors. The proposal was not adopted.


Quick, painless death?
From its first use, there has been debate as to whether the guillotine always provided as swift a death as Dr Guillotin hoped. With previous methods of execution, there was little concern about the suffering inflicted. But where the guillotine was invented specifically to be "humane", the issue was seriously considered. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the very swiftness of the guillotine only prolonged the victim's suffering. The blade cuts quickly enough that there is relatively little impact on the brain case, and perhaps less likelihood of immediate unconsciousness than with a more violent decapitation, or long-drop hanging.

The person guillotined becomes unconscious very quickly and dies from shock and anoxia due to haemorrhage and loss of blood pressure within less than 60 seconds. It has often been reported that the eyes and mouths of people beheaded have shown signs of movement. It has been calculated that the human brain has enough oxygen stored for metabolism to persist about 7 seconds after the supply is cut off. As in hanging, the heart continues to beat for some time after decapitation.

Various experiments have been made on guillotined heads and generally seem to show that little consciousness remains after 2-5 seconds of separation from the body although some have concluded that the head retains feeling for much longer. Whatever the truth, guillotining is probably one of the least cruel methods of execution and yet one that has a high deterrent value because it is perceived as gruesome.

So what's your verdict?