Saddam Hussein hanged in Iraq in 2006.
Probably the most high profile execution in modern times took place on at 6:10 a.m. on December the 30th 2006 when the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein was hanged in a two-story building in the Shia Khadamiya District in Northern Baghdad. Saddam was dressed in a white shirt and dark overcoat for his execution. He was led up the long flight of steps to the gallows platform where he was positioned over the chequer plate metal trap doors. The rope was looped through a metal eye on the ceiling and the free rope hung down to its attachment point.A black scarf and a seven coil American style noose were placed round his neck.He refused the traditional hood and after being taunted by his guards, the trapdoors were released and he dropped a little more than his own height through the trap and was brought to a halt by the noose which had its knot positioned under his left ear.From the cell phone video and still photographs it would seem that his neck was broken and that he died without any struggle.He was taken down after hanging for just ten minutes.Click here for a photo.Saddam had been convicted of the murder of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail in the 1980s.

An Iranian hanging in 2007.
On the 15th of July 2007 a 29 year old Iranian woman, whose name was only given as Houriyeh, was hanged in public together with her two male accomplices. She had murdered her husband by strangling him in his sleep and paid the two men, Farhad and Reza, to murder three of her in-laws.They strangled her husbands parents and stabbed his brother to death.Houriyeh wore a head-to-toe black chador for her execution which seems to be the standard dress for condemned women in Iran. The three prisoners were bought to the execution ground, their legs shackled and their hands cuffed behind them.The American style coiled nooses were attached to a spreader bar suspended from the jib of a crane.At the signal all three were simultaneously lifted off the ground and became fully suspended. The two men appeared to become unconscious almost instantly but a few seconds after being lifted into the air Houriyeh began to struggle hard, continuing for just over a minute before becoming still.Some 5,000 people, including judiciary and police officials, witnessed the execution and it was secretly videoed on a mobile phone.The video seems to bear out 19th century newspaper reports of short drop hangings in Britain and the USA, where women often seemed to die harder than men. Click here for a photograph.

Does the prisoner feel pain where the drop is sufficient to break their neck?
Obviously no one can be sure but it is generally held that if the person does feel pain, it is only during the instant that their neck is broken which can be measured in fractions of a second (see below).
Those who witnessed 20th century British hangings never described any obvious suffering on the part of the prisoner and the two post-mortem reports that are available do not seem to indicate anything but a quick death. There were no evidence of conscious suffering in the independently witnessed hangings of Westley Allan Dodd and Charles Campbell in Washington and Billy Bailey in Delaware.Although death was not instantaneous (it never is) unconsciousness was.

According to Harold Hillman, a British physiologist who has studied executions, "the dangling person probably feels cervical pain, and suffers from an acute headache, as a result of the rope closing off the veins of the neck. It had been generally assumed that fracture-dislocation of the neck causes instantaneous loss of sensation. Sensory pathways from below the neck are ruptured, but the sensory signals from the skin above the noose and from the trigeminal nerve may continue to reach the brain until hypoxia blocks them."This would seem to be likely where the neck is not broken, e.g. in a standard drop US style hanging and may be accompanied by some physical struggling.

It has been calculated in evidence placed before the Aberdare Committee that it takes 0.02 of a second (1/50th of a second) at the end of the drop for the rope to constrict and then break the neck.Other research into how the brain functions has revealed that a total loss of any awareness will take place within 0.3 of a second after the spinal cord has been completely severed. The process of unconsciousness is triggered by a reaction within the axons (nerve fibres) of the severed nerves. Normal nerve signals require an antagonistic process within the axons which can only happen if the nerve circuit is unbroken. If, however, all the large spinal nerves are disconnected from the brain stem, as they are in measured drop hanging or beheading, an extremely rapid reaction takes place in both ends of the severed nerves, leading to all nerve impulses becoming stochastic (random) instead of structured.

Consciousness is instantly lost when the process becomes stochastic, no matter how high the activity of the brain may have been prior to it . Furthermore, a self destroying process will begin in the axons, spreading from the point of damage, and destroying the nerves all the way to the main synapses within the brain. This process will be completed within only five seconds.On this basis where the spinal cord is severed, half a second is the maximum possible time that any pain could be felt.This is born out by observation and the total lack of any obvious signs of suffering in properly carried out measured drop hangings.