Especially when you could hold a vote, letting the people decide the method. One option: yeet the person from the trebuchet. The second: yeet something at them from a trebuchet!
It was an instrument used by the burghers in bringing about the end of European feudal lordship, replacing the feudal mode of production with the capitalist one.
This might fit in mediaeval times, with the earliest possible recorded use in the 13th century, but it's certainly not well-known until the early modern period and most famous right on the border between early and late modern.