WriteMyEssay.com

...definition, capital punishment, or the death sentence is the extreme penalty for any crime. Execution of criminals for a great variety of offenses has been carried out by such methods as drowning, stoning, hanging, and beheading. Modern executions are usually done by means of electrocution, the gas chamber, or a lethal injection of a drug. Hanging is still used in some places, as is execution by firing squad.
Some forms of execution were extremely brutal. In the Roman Empire, Persia, and in medieval Japan, crucifixion for a variety of offenders was common. This involved binding or nailing the offender to a crossbeam fixed on a vertical beam set in the ground. Death eventually ensued from exhaustion, suffocation, bleeding, or heart failure.
In Europe during the Middle Ages, hanging was used for persons of low status and decapitation for members of the upper classes. Witches and heretics were burned at the stake. One of the worst methods of execution, drawing and quartering, was used in England. Victims were first partly strangled. Then, while still alive, they were disemboweled; their intestines torn out and burned and the body was subsequently hacked into four pieces....