Many relate to forms of execution: a creature with guns growing out of its back represents the firing squad while a glowing humanoid with syringes for eyes represents lethal injections.
Cruel forms of execution in Europe included "breaking" on the wheel, boiling in oil, burning at the stake, decapitation by the guillotine or an axe, hanging, drawing and quartering, and drowning.
Yet, while the US started to shift toward less spectacular forms of execution, they were not less public, not less symbolic, and certainly not less racially charged, as a result – until an effective moratorium on the penalty which lasted from 1960 to 1976.
We would hardly regard a king who executes every law-breaker, the jaywalker no less than the murderer, as just; nor would we feel much better if, in an effort to fit the punishment to the crime, the king should reserve the more "humane" forms of execution for the jaywalker.
"Prospective opportunities in the municipal sector may be narrower than in the past, given changing perceptions about municipal risk among buyers, lower confidence in the financial guaranty industry broadly and a trend toward alternative forms of execution," including uninsured bonds, Moody's said Wednesday.
Then the Roman military power whipped Jesus, and then crucified him, one of the cruelest forms of execution.
Thomas Shaw, who was chaplain for the Levant Company stationed at Algiers during the 1720s, describes the various forms of executions practiced as follows: According to one source, these hooks in the wall as an execution method were introduced with the construction of the new city gate in 1573.
Burning at the stake was a traditional form of execution for women found guilty of witchcraft.
Electrocution became the most common form of execution by the middle of the last century, displacing hangings.
The Legislature has passed a bill making lethal injection the only form of execution in the state.
