Title: Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Headings: Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Guillotine: Less than a minute
Firing squad: Less than a minute
Electric chair: 2 minutes to 15-plus minutes
Hanging: 4 to 11 minutes
Gas chamber: 10-18 minutes
Lethal injection: 5 minutes to 2 hours
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Content: unconsciousness is immediate and death follows a short time later.” But he added that hanging “is a crude and imprecise practice, which always includes a risk that the inmate will slowly strangulate or asphyxiate, if the rope is too elastic or too short, or will be decapitated, if the rope is too taut or too long.” The gas chamber still on site at the former Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City on May 13, 2011. ASSOCIATED PRESS file
Gas chamber: 10-18 minutes
The gas chamber was used in only 11 executions between 1979 and 1999, largely because the deaths by cynanide were protracted and in some cases disturbing to watch. The last inmate to go this way, Walter LaGrand, chose it over lethal injection and choked and gagged for several minutes until he was pronounced dead 18 minutes after the poison pellets were dropped into acid, according to media witnesses in the Arizona prison. In 1983, Mississippi officials claimed child rapist and killer Jimmy Lee Gray died two minutes after the gas started, but witnesses said he was still alive — moaning and banging his head against a pipe — when the viewing room was cleared eight minutes into the execution. Restraints are shown on a table inside the death chamber of the new lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. Eric Risberg / AP file
Lethal injection: 5 minutes to 2 hours
The length of lethal injections can vary widely due to the chemicals used, the physiology of the inmate and other complications. In cases where a short-acting barbiturate is followed by a paralytic and a heart-stopper, inmates have been rendered unconscious in seconds and pronounced dead in as little as five minutes.