I refer to the article Gallows for pushers, handshakes for drug lords

"At 6am, the trap door will open and his body will drop and hang until it stops writhing."

Singapore employs the long drop method of hanging whereby the length of the rope is calculated according to the Official Table Drop to the nearest two inches so that it can accomodate 570kg of weight.

Any lesser, the rope will not dislocate the second and third vertebrae or the fourth and fifth vertebrae and will not cause immediate unconsciousness to the prisoner, which in turn means the prisoner will have to die by strangulation, in which case the prisoner will twist and suffer before dying.

If the rope is too long and causes longer drop than necessary, the prisoner would most probably be decapitated. If the execution of Nguyen is carried out by a very experienced hangman who knows the Official Drop Table like the back of his hand, it is likely the hanging will cause immediate unconsciousness. However, there is every possibility that the execution could go wrong. A botched hanging will cause untold suffering to the prisoner.

Personally, I am not in support of capital punishment but if capital punishment must be carried out, it is said that long drop hanging is the most humane method of execution by far, out-doing even lethal injection by which the prisoner takes a long time to lose unconsciousness.

The prisoner is in much agony by remaining conscious with the knowledge that his or her life is going to end at any minute.