Throughout history, societies have devised various methods for carrying out the death penalty, including beheading, hanging, firing squads, the electric chair, gas chambers, and lethal injection. However, no method is foolproof. Sometimes, executions don’t result in a swift death; they might fail entirely, require multiple attempts, or drag on gruesomely.
Here’s a look at ten executions that deviated significantly and horrifically from their intended plan.
10 Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, boasted royal lineage, connecting her to several kings. Unfortunately, she became entangled in the turmoil surrounding King Henry VIII’s split from the Roman Catholic Church and his controversial divorce from Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn.
Tensions escalated when Pole’s son, Reginald, became a cardinal in 1536 and began to vocally oppose Henry VIII. He soon fled to Rome, beyond the king’s grasp. Unable to reach Reginald, Henry targeted his mother instead. Margaret Pole was arrested in 1539 and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Her execution by beheading was set for 1541, when she was 67.
The executioner, however, lacked experience. His first axe blow missed her neck entirely. Subsequent strikes landed haphazardly on her neck, head, and back. Reports claim it took a horrifying 11 blows to finally sever her head. In 1886, Pope Leo XIII beatified Pole, granting her the title Blessed Margaret Pole within the Roman Catholic Church.
9 Joseph Samuel
In 1801, Joseph Samuel arrived in the Australian penal colony from England, transported for theft. Two years later, he joined a gang to rob a house. The robbery went awry when a constable intervened and was killed. Samuel and others were eventually caught. While Samuel admitted to the robbery, he denied the murder but was still sentenced to hang.
On his execution day, Samuel maintained his innocence. He was taken to Parramatta alongside another condemned man. As the cart was pulled away, the noose around Samuel’s neck snapped, dropping him to the ground. A second noose was procured, but its knot unraveled. A third attempt was made with a new rope, which also broke. An inspection revealed no signs of sabotage. Believing it a sign of divine intervention, the governor pardoned Samuel.
Sadly, Samuel didn’t reform. Caught committing další crime a few years later, he was jailed. He soon escaped with eight other inmates, stole a boat, and vanished, presumed drowned at sea.
8 John “Babbacombe” Lee
John Lee gained notoriety as another “man they couldn’t hang.” In 1884, Lee was convicted for the murder of Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse in the small English village of Babbacombe. Despite weak, circumstantial evidence, he was sentenced to death by hanging at Exeter Prison in 1885.
Before the scheduled execution, the prison executioner meticulously tested the gallows’ trap door several times, confirming it worked properly. Yet, when Lee stood on the platform, the trap door jammed and refused to open. They reset and tried again, and then a third time, but the result was the same – the door wouldn’t budge. Lee’s execution was postponed, and his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was eventually released after serving 22 years.
7 Ginggaew Lorsoungnern
In 1978, Ginggaew Lorsoungnern, working as a domestic helper in Bangkok, Thailand, kidnapped her employer’s 6-year-old son. She handed him over to a criminal gang for ransom. The ransom exchange failed, leading the gang to tragically kill the boy by stabbing him and burying him alive.
Lorsoungnern and the gang members were apprehended and sentenced to death by firing squad. On execution day, Lorsoungnern was tied to a cross, and an executioner fired ten rounds into her body. A medical examiner found no signs of life, and she was moved to the morgue. There, incredibly, she began making noises and attempted to sit up. While a second accomplice was prepared for execution, Lorsoungnern was rolled over to hasten bleeding. Discovering she was still alive, the execution team tied her up again and fired 15 more bullets, finally ending her life.
A similar issue plagued the execution of a third conspirator. He survived the initial 13 shots and required an additional 10 rounds to be killed.
6 Jimmy Lee Gray
In 1976, while on parole for killing his girlfriend, Jimmy Lee Gray committed the heinous crime of kidnapping, raping, and murdering a three-year-old girl. He received a death sentence and was scheduled for execution in Mississippi’s gas chamber in 1983.
On the execution day, Gray was secured in the gas chamber chair. Cyanide pellets were dropped into sulfuric acid beneath the chair, releasing poisonous gas. Witnesses reported Gray took a deep breath, then began gagging violently and repeatedly smashed his head against the metal pole behind him. Official medical accounts stated his heart stopped after two minutes, but witnesses claimed his moaning and thrashing continued for the full eight minutes they were permitted to observe before being quickly ushered out.
Following Gray’s disturbing execution, Mississippi added a headrest to the gas chamber chair. A few months later, the state transitioned to lethal injection as its primary execution method.
5 Frank Joseph Coppola
Frank Joseph Coppola, a former police officer, was convicted in 1978 for beating a woman to death during a robbery in Newport News, Virginia. He was sentenced to death. While professing his innocence, Coppola requested execution by electric chair in the summer of 1982, dropping all further appeals to spare his family additional suffering.
Electric chair executions typically involve two jolts of electricity: the first intended to induce unconsciousness, the second to cause death. In Coppola’s case, the first jolt failed to render him unconscious; witnesses saw and heard him writhing. During the second jolt, lasting nearly a minute, witnesses reported hearing and smelling sizzling flesh. Fire erupted from both Coppola’s head and leg, filling the chamber with so much smoke that visibility became severely limited.
4 Jesse Tafero
Jesse Tafero was convicted of fatally shooting two police officers during a 1976 traffic stop in Florida. Despite maintaining his innocence, he was sentenced to death by electric chair, with the execution set for 1990.
Before the execution, the natural sponge used in the electric chair’s headpiece needed replacement. Officials erroneously used a synthetic sponge, unsuitable for handling the electrical current without igniting. When the first jolt was administered, the headpiece burst into flames. Witnesses described flames nearly a foot high shooting from Tafero’s head. It took a horrifying seven minutes and two additional jolts of electricity before Tafero was declared dead. Inmates later reported smelling his burning flesh for days.
Tragically, post-execution evidence emerged supporting Tafero’s claims of innocence. An accomplice who was present during the traffic stop eventually confessed to being the shooter.
3 Brian Steckel
In 1994, Brian Steckel deceptively gained entry into Sandra Lee Long’s apartment, where he proceeded to rape and strangle her before setting her bedroom ablaze, causing her death. Convicted in 1997, Steckel was sentenced to death by lethal injection. While imprisoned, he sent cruel, taunting letters to Long’s mother. His execution took place in Delaware in 2005.
During the procedure, officials observed that the anesthetic injected into Steckel began leaking into the tissue around the IV site in his arm, but they failed to correct the issue. He was subsequently administered a paralytic agent and a painful heart-stopping drug. A blockage occurred in the IV line, which was eventually cleared, but still without effective anesthesia. The process took an unusually long time, prompting Steckel himself to question the delay aloud. Prison officials denied any procedural errors, stating they merely intended to give Steckel additional time for final words.
2 Joseph Wood
Joseph Wood was convicted for the 1989 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her father. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in Arizona, with the execution carried out in 2014.
Wood was secured to a gurney, and the initial stages of the execution appeared normal, with no issues inserting the IV. However, due to difficulties sourcing standard execution drugs, Arizona employed an experimental two-drug cocktail never before used in the state. This same untested combination had recently resulted in a prolonged execution in Ohio, taking nearly 30 minutes. Despite this precedent, Arizona officials anticipated a quick procedure. Instead, it became agonizingly protracted.
Witnesses reported seeing Wood gasping for air and making noises just minutes after the drugs were administered. The execution ultimately lasted nearly two hours, involving 15 separate injections and hundreds of gasps before Wood was finally pronounced dead, marking it as one of the longest executions in U.S. history.
1 Romell Broom
Convicted of the 1984 abduction, rape, and murder of a 14-year-old girl, Romell Broom was sentenced to death.
In September 2009, Broom’s execution by lethal injection commenced. The execution team struggled immensely, making 18 unsuccessful attempts to insert the IV needles required to deliver the drugs. They probed veins in both his arms and legs, at one point even hitting bone. Broom reportedly tried to cooperate, shifting positions and flexing his fingers to help locate a viable vein. When they finally inserted a needle, the vein collapsed upon attempting to inject saline solution. After two torturous hours, the state officials halted the execution attempt.
The governor granted a one-week reprieve while Broom’s lawyers appealed, arguing a second attempt would constitute double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment. His appeals were denied by both the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. A new execution date was set for 2017, then delayed again to 2022. However, Broom died of natural causes in prison in December 2020, before the state could attempt a second execution.
These accounts offer a grim reminder of the fallibility inherent in state-sanctioned executions. Whether due to human error, equipment malfunction, or unforeseen biological reactions, the process designed to deliver death can sometimes result in prolonged agony or even outright failure.
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