There exist many reports and pictures of actual short drop hangings which seem to show that the person died quickly and fairly peacefully, while others indicate a slow and agonising death by strangulation.

Total body death results usually within less than 20 minutes as the brain becomes starved of oxygen. In Britain, it was normal to leave the body suspended for an hour to ensure death.

Two men were hanged in Jordan in May 1995 and an official who witnessed the hangings said, "Although they fell unconscious in a matter of minutes, their hearts stopped 20 minutes later."

Where the standard drop proves inadequate to break the neck, the prisoner seems often to suffer a more cruel death where little or no drop is used. The force generated by a drop of 5 or 6 feet is very considerable and does great damage to the skin, muscles and ligaments of the neck but does not necessarily induce asphyxia any sooner. This description of a hanging at San Quentin prison in California is from Clinton Duffy who was the warden there from 1942 to 1954 and relates to the execution of Major Raymond Lisemba on May 9th, 1942. "The man hit bottom and I observed that he was fighting by pulling on the straps, wheezing, whistling, trying to get air, that blood was oozing through the black cap. I observed also that he urinated, defecated, and droppings fell on the floor, and the stench was terrible". "I also saw witnesses pass out and have to be carried from the witness room. Some of them threw up."
It took ten minutes for the condemned man to die. When he was taken down and the cap removed, "big hunks of flesh were torn off" the side of his face where the noose had been, "his eyes were popped," and his tongue was "swollen and hanging from his mouth. His face had turned purple." Fortunately not all standard drop hangings were so gruesome and many prisoners did not show any signs of physical suffering.

It takes between a half and three quarters of a second for a person to reach the end of the drop after the trap opens. The force produced by the prisoners body weight multiplied by the length of fall and the force of gravity, coupled with the position of the noose is designed to cause a virtually instant fracture-dislocation of the neck which leads to death by comatose asphyxia. It is thought that brain death will occur in around 6 minutes and whole body death normally within 10-15 minutes. It is very variable, however, with official reports of from 3-25 minutes for total death to have occurred.

Does the prisoner feel pain where the drop is sufficient to break their neck?
Obviously no one can be sure but it is generally held that if they do feel pain, it is only during the instant that their neck is broken which can be measured in milliseconds.
Those who witnessed modern British hangings never described any obvious suffering on the part of the prisoner and the two post-mortem reports that are available do not seem to indicate anything but a quick death. The independently witnessed hangings of Westley Allan Dodd (see below) in Washington and Billy Bailey in Delaware did not indicate any obvious signs of conscious suffering.
It is also probable that some people black out as they fall through the trap and are already unconscious before they reach the end of the drop.
However, according to Harold Hillman, a British physiologist who has studied executions, "the dangling person probably feels cervical pain, and suffers from an acute headache, as a result of the rope closing off the veins of the neck. It had been generally assumed that fracture-dislocation of the neck causes instantaneous loss of sensation. Sensory pathways from below the neck are ruptured, but the sensory signals from the skin above the noose and from the trigeminal nerve may continue to reach the brain until hypoxia blocks them."
In the opinion of Dr. Cornelius Rosse, the chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Washington School of Medicine, the belief that fracture of the spinal cord causes instantaneous death is wrong in all but a small fraction of cases. In this he is certainly right, but the point is whether it causes instantaneous loss of consciousness, which seems highly probable.

Surviving the gallows.
It is sometimes possible to revive a person hanged using a short drop as the next two cases illustrate.
An Iranian man identified only as Niazali, was hanged in February 1996 but survived after the victims relatives pardoned him. He told the Iranian daily newspaper "Kayhan" what it had felt like.
"That first second lasted like a thousand years. I felt my arms and legs jerking out of control. Up on the gallows in the dark, I was trying to fill my lungs with air, but they were crumpled up like plastic bags," Niazali said, describing his hanging which lasted 20 minutes. Another man in Iran survived suspension for 4 minutes on November 16th, 2001 after his victims relatives also pardoned him. Ramin Tshaharleng was taken to hospital and his condition was described as "satisfactory". Under Sharia law, the family of the victim have the power to pardon a murderer even after the execution has begun.

Conclusions.
Carried out carefully and humanely, using an accurately measured drop and modern noose, hanging is possibly the least cruel way to execute a criminal. In 20th century Britain, the whole process was over extremely quickly and every effort was made to reduce the criminals mental and physical suffering. However, as can be seen from the examples cited above, it can also be a very cruel death, if either botched or carried out in such a way as to intentionally maximise the prisoners suffering. It is probable that the countries that execute criminals using little or no drop in public do so in the hope of achieving maximum deterrence and feel that the criminal should be made to suffer for what they have done. Many respondents to my survey feel hanging is the most cruel form of capital punishment.

So it seems weve introduced western democracy into Iraq, but we cant introduce common decent human treatment (regardless of what he may have done in the past).

Or, to put it in context, weve pilloried members of the US and UK armed forces for treating Iraqi prisoners inhumanely (by pretending they were going to torture them or laughing at the state of their willies), but weve nothing to say about the same people wanting to commit institutional murder? That is a double standard.

Quote from: *she-devil*

I dont think hes dead!!

The video of him in the body bag with his neck looking well and truly broke says otherwise

Quote from: *she-devil*

Quote from: neXus

Quote from: *she-devil*

I dont think hes dead!!

The video of him in the body bag with his neck looking well and truly broke says otherwise

Well I havent seen that, the one I saw said they werent filming that.

They filmed the whole hanging and afterwards his corpse in a shroud Its been shown on BBC news 24 at least twice an hour this afternoon.

They just didnt show the actual hanging bit on TV.