Definition
1. (Criminal law — punishment) Death by suspension by the neck until life is extinct; a method of capital punishment. The formal judgment in a capital case historically directed that the condemned "be hanged by the neck till dead." Hanging was the standard method of execution in England from an early period and was widely adopted as the default method in American jurisdictions, though some states have permitted or required election between hanging and alternative methods such as shooting.
2. (Archaic procedural usage) Pending; during the pendency of a proceeding. In the old books, "hanging" appears as a synonym for "pending" — e.g., "hanging the process" meant "pending the process," and "if the tenant alien, hanging the præcipe" meant while the writ was pending. This sense is Latin-derived (pendente) and is now entirely obsolete in modern practice.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Suspended from above; unprotected and exposed (as in chess); extending beyond a page margin; colloquially, unattractive.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Suspended from above; adapted for sustaining a hanging object; also, deserving or foreboding death by the halter, as in "what a hanging face."
The gap that matters for researchers: the ordinary language sense of "hanging" as simple suspension is entirely separate from the criminal law meaning, which is a formal term of art describing a specific mode of capital punishment with precise procedural and doctrinal content. The archaic procedural sense — meaning "pending" — shares no obvious connection to either common usage and will confuse researchers encountering it in early common law sources without warning.
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Common Confusion
Two distinct legal meanings appear in historical sources under the same term. Researchers working in early common law materials — particularly reports involving writs and real property procedure — may encounter "hanging" used to mean "pending" rather than as a reference to execution. Burrill and Rapalje both flag this usage explicitly, tracing it to Coke on Littleton. Conflating the two meanings produces significant misreadings of historical procedural text.
Separately, researchers should not assume that "hanging" as a capital punishment method was universal across American jurisdictions at any given time. Several states adopted electrocution, lethal gas, or lethal injection as alternatives or replacements well before others, and some states permitted condemned persons to elect their method. Bouvier's edition notes Utah's statutory election between hanging and shooting, illustrating that uniformity was never complete.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Hanging in chains: A historical English aggravation in which the body of an executed murderer, following death, was suspended in chains near the site of the crime. This was a post-mortem punishment intended as public display and deterrence, not a distinct mode of execution. Black's (2nd ed.) notes it was used in atrocious cases and characterized the practice as eventually falling out of use. It has no modern legal significance.
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Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning problem is the primary trap. Any researcher working with English common law sources from roughly the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries must be alert to "hanging" appearing in procedural contexts with no connection to execution — it is simply a locution for "pending." This usage does not survive into American practice in any meaningful way, so the shift in corpus date matters significantly.
For capital punishment research, the term's history in Law Mind sources tracks a long transition: hanging was once the near-universal default method in American criminal law, then became one option among several as states adopted alternative methods, and has now been largely replaced or held in reserve in the small number of states retaining capital punishment. Statutes and case law across this arc will use "hanging" with different assumed default status depending on the period.
Researchers should also note that the precise statutory language of judgment — "hanged by the neck till dead" — appears consistently across historical sources and carries procedural significance: some courts treated departures from this formula as grounds for challenge. Tracing this language through state statutory revisions and constitutional challenges to execution methods requires attention to exactly when a given state modified its capital punishment statute.
The Anderson's entry makes a grammatical point with legal implications: "hanged" is the correct past participle in legal usage, not "hung." This distinction appears in judicial opinions and formal instruments and is not merely stylistic.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are broadly consistent on the criminal law meaning. Black's (both editions), Burrill, and Bouvier all track to Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Comm.) as the authoritative source, describing hanging as the mode of capital punishment used in England "from time immemorial." This consensus framing — immemorial English practice adopted universally in the United States — is slightly overstated; Bouvier's own Utah example demonstrates that uniformity was never absolute even at the time these dictionaries were written.
The archaic procedural meaning is flagged only by Rapalje and Burrill, making it easy to miss in sources that index only under Black's. Rapalje's note is the clearest: "hanging" means "pending" in the old books, citing Coke. Burrill provides the Latin derivation (pendente) and a second Coke citation. Researchers relying solely on Black's will find no warning of this usage.
Bouvier is the only source in this set to address the issue of method election by statute, reflecting the late-nineteenth-century moment at which state legislatures began actively legislating the particulars of execution. Anderson's is alone in addressing the grammatical convention ("hanged" not "hung") as a point of legal drafting, and in defining "hangman" as the officer charged with carrying out the sentence.
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Jurisdictional Note
Hanging as a capital punishment method has never been uniform across American jurisdictions. While it was the dominant method historically, states have diverged significantly — some abolishing capital punishment entirely, others replacing hanging with electrocution, lethal gas, or lethal injection at different points in the twentieth century, and a small number retaining hanging as an alternative method available by statute or election. Research into any specific jurisdiction's execution history requires direct consultation of that state's statutes and constitutional case law.
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