EXOD545 Jewish courts must administer capital punishment by means of strangulation. Were crimes to go unpunished, lawlessness would reign and people would kill each other. Why a murderer is executed by strangulation: In most cases a murderer tries to kill his victim quickly so that death is immediate. For this reason, the Torah prescribes strangulation as the means of execution, for of the four methods of capital punishment, strangulation is the quickest and least painful. If violation of a sin gives pleasure to the offender and the sin carries the death penalty, the Torah prescribed slower and more painful methods of capital punishment, such as stoning or burning.