Imagine you have been put to torture
It will cause pain, suffering and bodily torment, but then it take s your mind of the suffering of spirit, so you will only suffer from your wounds till the moment your death. Yet perhaps the main and the most racking pain comes not from the wounds but a certain knowledge that in an hour, then in 10 minutes, then in half a minute and then right away at this very instant, your soul will leave your body. and you will no longer be a man and that is for certain. Your head lies right under the knife and you hear the descent above your head; it is that quarter of a second which is most terrible of all.
To kill or murder is more criminal than the crime itself. Judicial murder is a lot more dreadful than the criminal murder. One who is attacked by robbers and is knifed in the forest at night, or in someother way, still hopes till the very last moment that he will survive. But a "lawful""just" execution, that very last hope, with which it is infinitely easier to die, is taken away for certain Sentence has been passed and the dreadful torment lies in the impossibilty of escaping it; no anguish in the world can be greater.