Special Sub-Topic: Capital Punishment - A Historical Perspective Click Here To Play: Capital Punishment - A Historical Perspective

Gary Gilmore, a convicted murderer on Utah's death row, had the distinction of being the first to be executed after the ban on executions was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977. At that time, he had the choice from among several execution methods. Which did he choose?

Death by firing squad. Gilmore selected the firing squad. Utah was the only state in the country that offered that option and Gilmore thought that method was less likely to be botched. His final words were "Let's do it."

Convicted of complicity in the murder and robbery of Mabel Monahan in Burbank, California, in March 1953, this woman was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin prison. On her execution date, she was strapped into the gas chamber at 10:00 a.m. - the cyanide pellets ready to drop into the container of sulfuric acid - when the phone rang. The Governor ordered the execution stopped. By 10:25 another phone call from the Governor ordered the execution to proceed. The prison attendants calmed her and got her strapped back into the chamber for her execution, and once again, the Governor halted the execution and she was removed from the chamber. The phone rang again at 11:18, and the execution was on again. She was pronounced dead at 11:42.

Barbara Graham. Susan Hayward turned in a fine performance in the film, "I Want to Live". The circumstances surrounding this "technicality" botched execution created an unusually cruel death for Ms. Graham. The actual nature of her involvement in the crime continues to be questioned.

Convicted of treason by the courts of Elizabeth I of England, this woman endured two strokes of the executioner's axe. Her head not yet completely severed, a third stroke was necessary to free her head from her shoulders.

Mary, Queen of Scots. Born in 1542, Mary, Queen of Scots, was put into English custody in 1568. She was convicted for complicity in the Babington plot and executed in 1587.

Convicted of murdering a couple with a pickaxe in 1983, Karla Faye Tucker begged this Texas governor for mercy. Instead, this Texas governor mocked her desperate plea in an interview with a reporter from "Talk" magazine by whimpering "Please don't kill me."

Gov. George W. Bush. Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection on February 3, 1998, and was the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1977. Bush was elected 43rd President of the U.S. in 2000.

Maximillian Robespierre, the head of the "Committee of Public Safety", which effectively ruled France in the most turbulent years of the French Revolution, was responsible for the Reign of Terror, during which some 17,000 Frenchmen were executed. Proving once again the old adage, "what goes around, comes around," Robespierre became a victim of his own Reign of Terror on July 28, 1794. The method used for his execution was what?

Guillotine. Robespierre tried to kill himself with a gun just prior to his scheduled execution. He missed and spent his last hours with his jaw dangling from his head.

Contrary to popular belief, the guillotine was not invented by Dr. Guillotin. The good doctor simply proposed the method to standardize French executions. The first evidence of the use of this device dates to 1307 in Ireland, used to execute Murcod Ballagh. The last time it was used in France was in what year?

1977. Hamida Djandoubi was executed on September 10, 1977. Eugene Weidmann was the last to be executed in public in France and he died in 1939.

Susan Sarandon turned in an Oscar-winning performance as Sister Helen Prejean as the spiritual advisor to a man on Louisiana's death row. In the end, Sean Penn's character is strapped to the gurney, needles are inserted into his veins, and a cocktail of lethal chemicals pours into his body as his life is drained out. However, in real life, Sister Helen did not see a death by lethal injection. In true death, what execution method was used?

Electrocution. Tim Robbins changed the story here because he did not want viewers to focus on the visual horror of an electrocution, but to focus on the concept of capital punishment itself.

Lethal injection is something of a panacea for death penalty proponents. After all, it's quick, painless and humane! Or is it? When Justin Lee May was executed, Robert Wernsman of "The Huntsville Item" wrote that May "gasped, coughed and reared against his heavy leather restraints, coughing once again before his body froze." Another reporter, Michael Graczyk, stated, "He went into coughing spasms, groaned and gasped, lifted his head from the death chamber gurney and would have arched his back if he had not been belted down." In which state was this execution performed?

Texas. Texas has performed over one-third the executions performed in the U.S. since the resumption of capital punishment in 1977. In the case of Stephen Peter Morin, it took 45 minutes of probing his legs and arms to find suitable veins in which to insert the catheter needles.

Amnesty International specifies several reasons that capital punishment is inhumane. Which of these reasons is not mentioned by that organization?

Executions are more costly than life imprisonment. Cost effectiveness issues are not human rights issues and thus not within the scope of Amnesty International. However. there is considerable evidence that the death penalty is not cost-effective either. The appeals process and other costs associated with an execution have often been shown to exceed the cost of life imprisonment. In a study by "Miami Herald" (Jan 5, 1997), it was determined that the average cost of an execution was about $3.2 million, or about 6 times the cost of a sentence of life imprisonment. For additional information on the arguments by Amnesty International against the death penalty, please go to www.amnesty.org .

In the trial of Socrates, he had been accused of atheism and corruption of the youth of Athens. In his defense, Socrates said that he believed that the reason he was on trial was not for questioning the beliefs of others, rather for exposing their ignorance. At any rate, Socrates drank this poisonous substance.

Hemlock. Actually the jury that sentenced Socrates to death reversed itself and wanted to exile him instead. Socrates refused that reversal as it was against his principles to accept the exile. He drank the Hemlock.