legal-history capital-punishment
Was there ever a law that if someone sentenced to death survived their execution they would be released free?
<p>I read in a biography that if someone was sentenced to death penalty and the execution squad misses when firing at him, he will be released as a free man. Is it true that there ever was such a law or was it ever practiced?</p>

<p>The poem "<a href="http://www.emerycsd.org/webpages/dcarter/salem.cfm?subpage=1143672" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Half-Hanged Mary</a>" (1995) by Margret Atwood purports to recount the application of such a law in the 1680s to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Webster_(alleged_witch)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Mary Reeve Webster</a> of Hadley, Massachusetts, who is one of Atwood's ancestors.</p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cotton Mather</a> (the son of the then President of Harvard University and a strong advocate of the Salem witch trials) recounted this case more or less contemporaneously, and there is no good reason to doubt the veracity of this part of his account.</p>

<p>I can find no reference to a law.  Quite a few to occasions where a death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment or transportation, even to release at the discretion of the court, not as a legal right.  One or two where the convict was returned for a later attempt at execution, presumably successful.</p>

<p>So, nice idea, but almost certainly not true.</p>
