1996: Roberto Giron and Pedro Castillo, televised shootings
Add comment September 13th, 2018 Headsman
Roberto Giron and Pedro Castillo, peasants who raped and murdered a four-year-old girl, were shot at the Guatemalan town of Escuintla on September 13, 1996.
The executions — Guatemala’s first juridical shootings since 1983, although civil war death squads had ravaged the country in the meanwhile — were filmed by the press and televised, and the tape told an troubling tale: both men survived the initial volley and after paunchy doctors hastily conferred by the gasping doomed men, were icily finished off by the squad commander’s pistol.
Warning: Mature Content. This is a snuff film. A slightly longer cut of the same reel can be found here.
Thanks to this ghastly debacle, Guatemala changed its execution method to lethal injection — an application of which was also televised in 2000.
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Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Botched Executions,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Guatemala,Mature Content,Milestones,Murder,Public Executions,Rape,Shot
Tags: 1990s, 1996, escuintla, pedro castillo, roberto giron, september 13, television
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