Alireza M's Failed Hanging: A Historical Context and Potential Outcomes

The BBC reports:

Iran's justice minister says there is "no need" for a man who survived a hanging to be hanged a second time. 

Lawyers want the head of the judiciary to stop a repeat hanging after the man was found alive in a morgue. 

. . . 

The 37-year-old convicted drug smuggler, named as Alireza M, was found alive in a morgue after being hanged at a jail in the north-eastern city of Bojnord last week. 

He had been left to hang for 12 minutes after which a doctor declared him dead, reports said.

When I saw this story, I was immediately reminded of an essay I read in the Green Bag last year.  I had been trying to find things to distract me from impending finals, and reading through volumes of the original Green Bag was an excellent strategy that I recommend to anybody bent on amusing, educational procrastination.

The essay is Remarkable Resuscitations After Execution.  (Citation: 2 Green Bag 464 (1890); here is the link to HeinOnline version).  The essay recounts several stories of convicted criminals who had been sentenced to death, hanged, or otherwise executed (e.g., broken at the wheel), but had miraculously survived.  The variety of stories, as well as approaches that society and officials would take to resuscitations following executions, provide an interesting context for Iran's situation.

The 1724 case of Margaret Dickson is an example that Iran's Justice Minister should cite in arguing that Alireza M. should not be hanged again:

[Margaret Dickson] was hanged for infanticide; the body was cut down and placed in a coffin, and removed by her friends with a view to interment in the parish churchyard of Masselburgh.  The jolting of the cart and the admission of air through some injury to the coffin, appear to have combined in resuscitating the woman; for she showed evident signs of life before the cart had proceeded one third of the distance.  She was removed, revived, prayed with by a minister, and received back into the circle of her friends.  She lived creditably many years afterward, had a large family, and sold salt about the streets of Edinburgh.

The government could reply with:

In 1658 a female servant was hanged for some crime at Oxford; she was probably kept hanging a longer time than usual, probably on account of the wonderful resuscitation of Anne Green a few years before.  She was cut down, and the body allowed to fall to the ground with much violence; yet she lived.  But the severity of the law insisted upon her undergoing a second and more fatal hanging.

I would last like to include the Green Bag's summary of Helen Gillet's case.  This attempted execution took place in France in 1625.  While this case concerns the punishment of beheading, I think that its notable facts merit its inclusion in this post as well as the length of the following excerpt:

A young girl, Helen Gillet, was tried on the charge of infanticide; and although the evidence was very vague and unsatisfactory, she was condemned to death by the parliament of Dijon.  The execution was to take place on May 13th.  We are told that on the appointed morning the executioner confessed himself and received the sacrament, and that when he arrived at the scaffold he exhibited the most lively signs of mental anguish.  He wrung his hands and raised them to heaven, and falling in his knees, prayed for pardon from the culprit, and begged the blessings of the assistant priests.  He cried out that he wished he were in the place of her who was about to receive from him the mortal stroke.  At last, when the head of the miserable girl was laid upon the block, he raised the axe, but missing his blow, only wounded her left shoulder.  The headsman, horror-stricken, called aloud to the populace to kill him, and stones were thrown at him from all sides.  His wife, however, who was by his side, darted forward, and seizing Helen, placed her head once more upon the block, and the executioner struck again, but again missed his blow.  The rage of the multitude now knew no bounds, and the executioner fled for safety to a small chapel which stood near by.  His wife then seized a cord, and twisting it round the neck of the prisoner tried to strangle her, but a volley of stones flew from the crowd, and the female fiend drew out a pair of long sharp scissors with which she stabbed her victim in the face and neck and different parts of the body.  The populace, in a transport of rage, killed both her and her husband on the spot.  The lifeless, as it was supposed, body of Helen Gillet was taken charge of by a surgeon; and signs of life having been discovered by him, the application of prompt remedies restored her to consciousness.  The inhabitants of Dijon then presented a petition to the king, and prayed him to grant her his royal pardon.  The prayer was successful.

For additional, fascinating examples, I recommend that you read the entire essay, if it happens to be available to you.