execution

    To execute something means to carry it out as planned or directed. Laws are executed. The president of the United States takes an oath to faithfully execute his duties. A person being executed is another matter. It means a sentence of death is being carried out, or executed. This is also called capital punishment. A crime for which someone might be sentenced to death is called a capital crime.
     In the United States, we now execute people by lethal injection--that is, we poison them. Lethal injection is a fairly new method of killing people. Before the invention of lethal injection, people condemned to die were killed in the electric chair--they were shocked to death with electricity. Before the electric chair they were killed in a gas chamber. Before the gas chamber they were hanged. People are executed by the different states, so there is no one date to any of these methods of execution. The last legal hanging in the United States was in 1970--not so long ago.
     Execution was banned for several years in the 1970's. The Supreme Court ruled that minorities were being unfairly sentenced to death. No one was executed until the states could convince the court that they could have a death penalty and apply it fairly. The United States is one of the only western nations that still executes criminals. Execution continues, even though people protest it, although most of the protests seem to take place in the states where execution is rare ( as it is in Pennsylvania ). People must get used to the idea when it is used frequently--as it is in Texas, California ( yes, California ), Georgia and Florida.
    

hanging

     People who have read about illegal hangings may have missed something. Hanging was the method of executing criminals for centuries. The last hanging of a condemned criminal in the United states was in 1970.  That's part of what made the unlawful lynchings in the South so sinister--the people who did the hanging constituted themselves a secret government of some kind, and too often believed that they were merely meting out "justice".  They weren't merely violent criminals, but an organized cult with a warped philosophy--a philosophy we still hear too much of today, propounded by people and groups who believe themselves superior to government by the people and the rule of law.