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Throughout history, various societies have employed numerous methods to carry out capital punishment, such as beheading, hanging, firing squads, electric chairs, gas chambers, and lethal injections. Unfortunately, not all executions proceed smoothly—some may fail completely, while others take multiple attempts or an unexpectedly long time to bring about death.
Here are ten instances of executions that went awry and failed to follow the intended course.
10. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was of royal descent and connected to several kings. Sadly, she became embroiled in the political turmoil surrounding King Henry VIII's split from the Roman Catholic Church, his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Reginald Pole, the son of Margaret, was appointed cardinal in 1536 and began openly opposing King Henry VIII. Soon after, he fled to Rome, escaping Henry’s grasp. In retaliation, Henry arrested Margaret Pole in 1539. She was held in the Tower of London, and at the age of 67, her beheading was set for 1541.
The executioner, lacking experience, missed her neck with the first strike of the ax. The following blows also failed to land properly, instead hacking at her neck, head, and back. It took 11 strikes before Margaret Pole was finally beheaded, a brutal and drawn-out execution. In 1886, she was beatified by Pope Leo XIII, earning the title of Blessed Margaret Pole within the Roman Catholic Church.
9. Joseph Samuel
In 1801, Joseph Samuel was transported from England to the Australian penal colony for theft. Two years later, he and a group of thieves decided to rob a house. During the robbery, a constable arrived and was killed. Samuel and several gang members were captured. Samuel confessed to the robbery but denied killing the constable. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death by hanging.
On the day of his execution, Samuel continued to assert his innocence. He was transported to Parramatta with another man, both scheduled for hanging. When the cart was pulled from beneath the gallows, Samuel’s noose snapped, causing him to fall to the ground. A second noose was brought, but it unraveled. A third noose was used, yet it too broke. After inspecting the ropes and finding no signs of tampering, the governor decided to release Samuel, believing it to be an act of divine intervention.
Despite this, Samuel didn’t change his ways. A few years later, he was caught committing another crime and sentenced to prison. Shortly after, he and eight other inmates escaped, stole a boat, and were never seen again, presumed drowned.
8. John “Babbacombe” Lee
John Lee became known as the ‘man they could not hang.’ In 1884, he was convicted of the murder of Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse, a resident of the small English village of Babbacombe. Despite the weak and circumstantial evidence, he was sentenced to death by hanging at Exeter Prison in 1885.
Before the execution, the executioner at Exeter Prison tested the trapdoor under the gallows multiple times to ensure it worked. However, when the time came to execute Lee, the trapdoor failed to open. Attempts were made again, but each time the trapdoor remained stuck. As a result, Lee’s execution was delayed and eventually commuted to life imprisonment. After serving 22 years, he was released from prison.
7. Ginggaew Lorsoungnern
In 1978, Ginggaew Lorsoungnern worked as a domestic helper for a family in Bangkok, Thailand. She kidnapped their 6-year-old son and handed him over to a criminal gang that held him for ransom. However, the ransom deal went wrong, and the gang ended up murdering the child. He was stabbed with a knife and buried alive.
Lorsoungnern and the gang were arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad. On the day of execution, Lorsoungnern was tied to a cross, and the executioner shot her ten times. After the medical examiner confirmed her death, she was sent to the morgue, where she unexpectedly began to make noises and tried to sit up. She was then turned over to speed up her bleeding while a second accomplice was brought for execution. When the execution team later discovered she was still alive, they re-tied her and shot her with 15 more bullets, finally killing her.
A similar issue occurred with the third individual scheduled for execution. The first 13 bullets failed to kill him, and he was shot 10 more times.
6. Jimmy Lee Gray
In 1976, while on parole for the murder of his girlfriend, Jimmy Lee Gray abducted, assaulted, and killed a three-year-old girl. In 1983, he was sentenced to death in the gas chamber in Mississippi.
On the day of his execution, Lee was restrained in the gas chamber chair. Cyanide pellets were dropped into a sulfuric acid solution beneath him, producing deadly gas. Gray reportedly took a deep breath before gagging and banging his head against the steel pole behind him. Though the attending doctors declared his heart had stopped after two minutes, witnesses described him continuing to moan and bang his head throughout the eight-minute observation period. They were promptly escorted out after the allotted time.
Soon after Gray’s execution, Mississippi added a headrest to the execution chair. A few months later, the state switched to lethal injection for all future executions.
5. Frank Joseph Coppola
In 1978, Frank Joseph Coppola, a former police officer, was convicted of killing a woman during a robbery in Newport News. He was sentenced to death in Virginia. Despite maintaining his innocence, Coppola requested to be executed by electric chair in 1982. The procedure involved two electric jolts: the first intended to render unconsciousness, and the second to cause death. In Coppola’s case, the first jolt failed to render him unconscious, and witnesses saw him writhing in pain. The second jolt, which lasted nearly a minute, produced the sound and smell of burning flesh. Both Coppola’s head and leg caught fire, and the chamber was filled with thick smoke, making it difficult for witnesses to see him clearly.
4. Jesse Tafero
Jesse Tafero was convicted of fatally shooting two police officers during a routine traffic stop in Florida in 1976. In 1990, he was sentenced to death by electric chair, despite maintaining his innocence.
Prior to Tafero’s execution, the sponge in the electric chair’s headpiece needed replacement. Instead of using a natural sponge capable of absorbing the current without catching fire, officials opted for a synthetic sponge. When the first electric jolt was applied, the headpiece ignited. Witnesses reported seeing flames as high as a foot shooting from Tafero’s head. It took seven minutes and two additional jolts before Tafero was pronounced dead. Prisoners claimed they could smell his burnt flesh for days following the execution.
The most tragic part of the Tafero case unfolded after his death—he was ultimately proven innocent, just as he had insisted all along. The real perpetrator, who was in the car with Tafero at the time of the shooting, later confessed to the crime.
3. Romell Broom
Romell Broom was convicted of abducting, raping, and murdering a 14-year-old girl in 1984, and was sentenced to death.
In September 2009, Broom was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. The execution team attempted 18 times to insert the necessary needles for the lethal drug combination but failed each time. They tried veins in both of Broom’s arms and legs, and at one point, even struck his bone. Broom tried to help by turning on his side and moving his arms and fingers. After several failed attempts, the needle was inserted, but his vein collapsed when they attempted to inject saline. After two hours, the execution was halted.
The governor granted a one-week reprieve, and Broom’s attorneys filed an appeal. He argued before the Ohio Supreme Court that a second execution attempt would violate the principle of double jeopardy and constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Both the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal. His execution was rescheduled for 2017, but it was postponed again until 2022. However, Broom passed away in prison in December 2020 before a second execution could take place.
2. Joseph Wood
In 1989, Joseph Wood shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and her father. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in Arizona in 2014.
Wood was strapped to a gurney, and the execution proceeded as planned. There were no issues with inserting the needle or administering the injection. However, due to difficulties in acquiring certain execution drugs, Arizona opted to use an experimental two-drug combination that had never been tested. This same combination had been used in a recent Ohio execution, which took nearly 30 minutes to complete. Despite this, Arizona officials anticipated the process would only take a few minutes, but it ended up lasting much longer.
Witnesses of the execution reported seeing Woods gasping for air and making noises a few minutes after the process began. The execution stretched on for nearly two hours, with 15 injections and several hundred gasps, making it one of the longest executions in U.S. history before Woods finally died.
1. Brian Steckel
In 1994, Brian Steckel gained entry into Sandra Lee Long’s apartment, where he raped, strangled, and set her bedroom on fire, killing her. Steckel was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1997. While incarcerated, he sent taunting letters to Long’s mother. The execution took place in 2005 in Delaware.
During his execution, officials noticed that the anesthetic Steckel had been given started to leak into the surrounding tissue of his arm, but they failed to address the issue. He was then administered a paralytic drug followed by a heart-stopping drug, both of which caused severe pain. Additionally, there was a blockage in the line, which was eventually cleared, but again, no anesthesia was provided. The process took so long that Steckel questioned aloud why it was taking so much time. Prison officials later denied any issues with the execution, claiming they simply wanted to give Steckel more time to say his final goodbyes.
