Frank's lawyer Lawrence Wynn sat across from him at a large metal table tapping his fingers and starring at Frank as if
he were wearing his shirt backwards but was too afraid to let him
know. Frank looked down at his nails and realized that he had not
been able to cut them for months. As a matter of fact he could do to
have a shave and a haircut.
“They wanna hang ya” Wynn said.
Franks eyes shot up. Wynn held his hand up to keep him from speaking.
“This judge has a mean hard-on for murderers and ain't been able to
execute someone in months. He, uh, Judge Labelle that is, even has the
fucking hippies on his side. 'Hangin' will save the state thousands
in funds for electricity!' He says its Green. Whatever the fuck that
means.”
Frank opened his mouth to speak but
only a rasp escaped his throat. He put his large hands to his neck
and rubbed his Adam's apple. He imagined having a noose slipped
around his neck as he starred out into a galley full of cheering
onlookers.
“They don't hang people anymore,
right?” Frank asked. Wynn shrugged. “Don't shrug. Fucking tell me
something!” Frank screamed as tried to rise from his chair
forgetting that there were shackles on his feet.
“Easy, big fella” Wynn said. He
looked towards the door where three armed guards stood and waved them
off. “From what I know about hanging, it ain't even all that damned
bad. It's over in, like, seconds.”
There are four methods of execution by
hanging. Suspension, short drop, standard drop, and long drop. In
suspension hanging, considered the worst of the four, a prisoner may
take close to twenty minutes before dying from strangulation due to
the carotid arteries being blocked reducing the flow of blood to the
brain. The short drop uses an almost snapping motion that fractures
the spinal column. Standard drops are set at heights which makes it
useless against someone rank's size. At 4 to 6 feet in length he
would land and still have enough inches left considering his height
to bend down a bit. The long drop takes into consideration a
prisoners height and weight to ensure that decapitation does not
occur.
It does though.
In 1901 cowboy turned train robber
Thomas E. Ketchum aka Black Jack was hung in New Mexico Territory by
inexperienced lawmen. Not taking into account the amount of weight
that he had gain during his incarceration he was decapitated during
execution. His head was severed immediately then reattached for
public display.
Frank knew this particular tale since
he was a fan of history regarding the Old West. Wynn began to tap his
fingers on the table once again and Frank replayed falling to his
death over and over in his head.
“What do you wanna do, Frank?” Wynn
asked.
“Tell them to give me a short drop”
he said.
“A what?” Wynn asked puzzled. “The
hell's that?”
“Trust me. Short drop.”
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