What happens if the condemned survives the death penalty

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that the Lord helped the survivor of the death penalty and this is an indication from above that the person is innocent. In ancient Rome, there was a legal rule Non bis in idem - "No one can be punished twice for one offense." Does this principle work today and what happens to those who managed to survive their own execution?

In today's world, the humane but highly controversial rules for pardoning survivors do not apply. Shot, hanged, executed in the electric chair, in a gas chamber or by the introduction of a lethal drug, miraculously survived during the execution, will be subject to the prescribed punishment until he dies.

To avoid unnecessary speculation, the laws of countries that still have the death penalty have a special wording stating that a person sentenced to death will be executed "until the moment of death." That is, even if the suicide bomber survives the second attempt to take his life, a third one will be carried out, and so on.

And although a person over the past couple of centuries has reached unprecedented heights in the deprivation of life of his own kind, failures during executions sometimes happen. In 1945, the first documented case occurred when a condemned man survived an execution in the electric chair.

Underage killer Willie Francis was seated on a chair and given an electric shock. But he did not die, but screamed "Turn it off, let me breathe, damn it!". The execution was interrupted, and Willy was given medical attention and returned to his cell. The instrument of execution underwent a thorough examination, which revealed a violation of one of the contacts.

While dealing with the equipment, Francis's lawyer Bertrand Deblanc wasted no time and tried to get his client to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The lawyer went to the US Supreme Court, but could not save the killer. In the spring of 1947, two years after the first unsuccessful attempt, the sentence was carried out in the same way.

In 2009, they failed to send the rapist and murderer of the 14-year-old girl Rommel Brum to the next world. The offender was supposed to be killed by a lethal injection, but it was not possible to insert a dropper needle into a vein. The executing medics poked through Broom's entire arm, but the vein was never found.

Even the prison doctor, who had never participated in executions, was called to help, but he could not help in any way. In total, 18 attempts were made to make a lethal injection, and at the end of the execution, the condemned was crying from pain and fear. As a result, Broom was returned to death row. Amnesty International raised a fuss about this inhumane attempt to execute the criminal and its lawyers tried to reduce the sentence.

Despite the resonance, the court refused to pardon Rommel Brum and the execution was postponed first to June 2020 and then to March 2022. But fate turned out to be faster than American justice and the rapist and 64-year-old killer died of coronavirus in a prison hospital in December 2020.