Byard Roger W, Maxwell Stewart Hamish
School of Medicine, The University of Adelaide, Frome Road, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia.
Forensic Science SA, 21 Divett Place, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia.
J Forensic Sci. 2018 Jul;63(4):1146-1148. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.13672. Epub 2017 Oct 23.
On the morning of December 17, 1827, nine convicts were executed by public hanging in Hobart Town, the capital of the British colony of Van Diemen's Land (now the Australian state of Tasmania). Two months previously they had drowned senior Constable George Rex on Small Island, which was part of the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbor, in front of five bound and gagged witnesses. They offered no defence at their trial. Examination of the Tasmanian colonial convict records shows that "suicide by lottery" involved convicts choosing two men, one to die and the other to kill him. The witnesses would earn a respite when taken away for the trial, and the murderer would be executed. "Death by gallows" could be considered a nineteenth-century version of an orchestrated suicide reminiscent of more modern "death by cop." This category of "judicial" murder-suicide expands the range of contemporary classifications of dyadic deaths.
1827年12月17日上午，9名罪犯在范迪门斯地（现澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚州）英国殖民地首府霍巴特镇被公开绞死。两个月前，他们在麦夸里港刑罚定居点所属的小岛上，当着5名被捆绑并堵住嘴的证人的面，淹死了高级警察乔治·雷克斯。他们在审判时没有进行辩护。对塔斯马尼亚殖民地罪犯记录的审查表明，“抽签自杀”涉及罪犯挑选两名男子，一人赴死，另一人将其杀害。证人在被带去受审时将获得缓刑，而凶手将被处决。“绞刑处死”可被视为19世纪一种精心策划的自杀形式，让人联想到更现代的“警察逼杀”。这类“司法”谋杀自杀扩展了当代二元死亡分类的范围。
