When the State Fails to Kill: The Grim Reality of Botched Executions
An exploration of historical and modern botched executions, from seventeenth-century hangings to electric chairs and lethal injections, examining the legal dilemmas of survival.
History is filled with chilling accounts of individuals who miraculously survived execution attempts, sparking profound legal and ethical dilemmas. When the state sentences a person to death, a failed execution raises a disturbing question: what happens next?
The Woman Who Survived the Gallows
One of the most remarkable historical cases occurred in England in 1650. Anne Green, a twenty-two-year-old servant from Oxfordshire, was sentenced to hanging after being falsely accused of murdering her newborn child following a miscarriage. She was hanged before a crowd and left suspended for half an hour. Afterward, her body was transferred to Oxford University for dissection. To the astonishment of the physicians, Green showed signs of life and pulse. They successfully revived her, and she eventually received a full pardon, living another nine years.
The Boy Who Survived the Electric Chair
Centuries later in Louisiana, seventeen-year-old Willie Francis faced the electric chair in 1946. When the switch was pulled, a severe electrical malfunction occurred. Francis convulsed, gasped for air, and screamed for them to stop, but he remained alive. The state attempted to execute him again the following year, arguing that the first failure did not violate constitutional protections. In 1947, Francis was successfully executed at the age of eighteen, creating a significant legal precedent regarding botched executions.
"Take it off, let me breathe!" — Willie Francis, 1946.
Modern Lethal Injection Failures
In recent decades, lethal injection has seen a high rate of complications. Romell Broom in Ohio endured eighteen needle insertion attempts over two hours in 2009 before the execution was called off. Broom later died of COVID-19 complications in prison while his legal team fought against a second attempt. Similarly, Kenneth Eugene Smith survived a botched lethal injection in Alabama in 2022, only to become the first person in the United States executed via nitrogen hypoxia in 2024.
These gripping accounts demonstrate that even the most meticulous state-sponsored execution protocols remain vulnerable to human error, mechanical failure, and unforeseen anomalies.
