Executioner

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For other meanings of the term, see executioner (disambiguation). Headsman redirects here; see The Headsman (2005 film) for the movie.

A judicial executioner is a person who carries out a death sentence ordered by the state or other legal authority, which was known in feudal terminology as high justice.

[edit] Scope and job

The executioner was usually presented with a warrant authorizing or ordering him to execute the sentence. The warrant protects the executioner from the charge of murder. Common terms for executioners derived from forms of capital punishment -though they often also performed other physical punishments- include hangman (hanging) and headsman (beheading). In the military the role of executioner was usually performed by a soldier, such as the provost. A common stereotype of an executioner is a hooded medieval or absolutist executioner.

While this task can be an occasional one, it can be carried out in the line of more general duty by an officer of the court, the police, prison staff, or even the military. A special case is the tradition of the Roman fustuarium, continued in forms of running the gauntlet, where the culprit (especially a soldier) receives his punishment from the hands of the comrades his crime has gravely harmed, e.g. for failing in vital sentinel duty or stealing from a ship's limited food supply.

Many executioners were professional specialists, who usually travelled a whole area since executions would rarely be very numerous, except near a very mighty lord. Still, especially if a resident, he would often also administer non-lethal physical punishments, or apply torture.

The term is also extended to administrators of a severe physical punishment that is not prescribed to kill, while there is a grey area as an excessive number of lashes. Thus a hundred with a Russian knout, is likely to be lethal to most victims; the knout was usually wielded by a criminal who had to pass through a probation and regular training, being let off his own penalties in return for his harsh services.

Since executions in France (using the guillotine since the French Revolution) persisted until 1977, the French Republic had an official executioner, Marcel Chevalier, until the formal abolition in 1981.

[edit] Executioners in society

In Europe and its white colonies, executioners have often been shunned by their neighbours. This attitude can be observed in numerous novels and films, for instance in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers or in the film La veuve de Saint-Pierre (The Widow of Saint-Pierre) in which executioners, who are minor characters, were ostracized by villagers. The profession of executioner sometimes ran through a family, especially in France where the Sanson family provided six executioners between 1688 and 1847, and the Deibler dynasty provided five between 1879 and abolition in 1981 (Louis Deibler, his son Anatole, Anatole's nephew Jean-Henri Desfourneaux, another nephew of Anatole, André Obrecht, and finally André's nephew by marriage, Marcel Chevalier). In Britain, the most notable dynasty was the Pierrepoints, who provided three executioners between 1902 and 1956 - Henry, his brother Thomas, and Henry's son Albert.

Native societies in Asia, Africa, The Americas, and the Pacific seem rarely to display such prejudice towards executioners, even when, as in North America, there is significant and vocal opposition to the death penalty itself.