Twenty-Two Minutes on the Rope: The Slow Death of Richard Quinn
The Everett wife-murderer was hanged at Walla Walla and strangled for more than twenty minutes before he died, begging to be dropped again. From the scaffold he insisted the shooting was an accident.
WALLA WALLA — Richard Quinn, a wife-murderer, of Everett, Wash., dangled at the end of a rope beneath the scaffold at the prison and slowly strangled to death, it being 22½ minutes from the time the trap was sprung until he was taken down. Quinn held his head back and tensed the muscles as the trap was sprung. While dangling in the air he begged audibly to be taken up and dropped again. He died after 22 minutes. From the scaffold he said he was innocent, as the shooting of his wife was an accident.
“While dangling in the air he begged audibly to be taken up and dropped again. He died after 22 minutes.”
Washington abolished the death penalty in 1913 and again in 2018, but the state's hangings were botched affairs that turned execution into spectacle. Quinn's 22-minute strangling is a reminder that the machinery of capital punishment has always been as cruel as the crimes it answered.
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