More on hanging in the Evergreen State
Yesterday, I wrote about how Washington State still had the option for death row inmates to choose death by hanging instead of lethal injection. I would have probably left it that. But a reader comment drove me to do some more research:
I believe there was one case where a guy chose hanging and then ate himself into obesity so they couldn't hang him. Now don't quote me on that but I think that's how it went down. Quite a few years ago.
Turns out, until 1994, hanging was the only way that death row inmates met their demise in Washington State.
The last hanging death occurred that year...as did a more humorous case worth noting: Mitchell Rupe, a violent and grotesque rapist and murderer who died in 2006, apparently ate himself to such a weight that a federal judge ruled hanging him would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment (because his sheer body weight would have forced his head to pop off in the process).
I guess that's one way to get a stay of execution.
