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Clay County is located in the U.S. state of Missouri and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the county had a population of 253,335, making it the fifth-most populous county in Missouri. Its county seat is Liberty. The county was organized January 2, 1822, and named in honor of U.S. Representative Henry Clay from Kentucky, later a member of the United States Senate and United States Secretary of State.
Gabriel's Rebellion was a planned slave rebellion in the Richmond, Virginia, area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked before its execution, and Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith who planned the event, and twenty-five of his followers were hanged.
Joseph Paul Franklin was an American serial killer, white supremacist, and domestic terrorist who engaged in a murder spree spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Conspiracy of 1741, also known as the Slave Insurrection of 1741, was a purported plot by slaves and poor whites in the British colony of New York in 1741 to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires. Historians disagree as to whether such a plot existed and, if there was one, its scale. During the court cases, the prosecution kept changing the grounds of accusation, ending with linking the insurrection to a "Popish" plot by Spaniards and other Catholics.
Lucy Delaney was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry, filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.
Polly Berry was an African American woman notable for winning two freedom suits in St. Louis, one for herself, which she won in 1843, and one for her daughter Lucy, which she won in 1844. Having acquired the surnames of her slaveholders, she was also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, the latter of which was the name used in her freedom suit.
Margaret Garner, called "Peggy", was an enslaved African American woman who killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. Garner and her family had escaped enslavement in January 1856 by traveling across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, but they were apprehended by U.S. Marshals acting under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Garner's defense attorney, John Jolliffe, moved to have her tried for murder in Ohio, to be able to get a trial in a free state and to challenge the Fugitive Slave Law. Garner's story was the inspiration for the novel Beloved (1987) by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and its subsequent adaptation into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey (1998).
Capital punishment in Iceland was practiced until 1830, with 240 individuals executed between 1551 and 1830. The methods of execution included beheading, hanging, burning, and drowning. Danish laws were influential, particularly after Lutheranism's adoption in the 17th century. The last execution occurred in 1830, and the death penalty was abolished in 1928. Infanticide was a common crime, often committed by women, and many were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted. The last execution of an Icelander happened in Denmark in 1913. The death penalty was officially abolished in Iceland in 1928, and its reintroduction has been rendered unconstitutional since a 1995 constitutional revision.
Arthur William Hodge was a Tortola-born planter, serial killer and politician who was executed by hanging in 1811 for the crime of murdering one of his slaves. Born on the British Virgin Islands, Hodge studied at Oriel College, Oxford, matriculating in 1781 before briefly serving as an officer in the 23rd Regiment of Foot. Returning to Tortola in 1803, he settled down to a life as a plantation owner while also pursuing a political career, serving in both the Executive Council and Legislative Assembly of the British Virgin Islands. In 1811, Hodge was hung after being found guilty of murdering a slave he owned, the first British subject to be executed for such a crime.
Capital punishment in Michigan was legal from the founding of Sault Ste Marie in 1668 during the French colonial period, until abolition by the state legislature in 1846. Michigan is one of three U.S. states never to have executed anyone following admission into the Union. The federal government, however, outside Michigan's jurisdiction, carried out one federal execution at FCI Milan in 1938.
Thomas Mason was an American businessman, planter and politician. As a son of George Mason, a Founding Father of the United States, Mason was a scion of the prominent Mason political family.
Capital punishment in New Jersey is currently abolished, after Governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine signed a law repealing it in 2007. Before this, capital punishment was used and at least 361 people have been executed.
Sarah "Sally" Bassett, also known as Sary, was an enslaved African woman from Bermuda. She was declared guilty and burned at the stake in June 1730 for the poisoning of three individuals. Her notoriety has influenced Bermudian history and cultural heritage.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
The Bisbee massacre occurred in Bisbee, Arizona, on December 8, 1883, when six outlaws who were part of the Cochise County Cowboys robbed a general store. Believing the general store's safe contained a mining payroll of $7,000, they timed the robbery incorrectly and were only able to steal between $800 and $3,000, along with a gold watch and jewelry. During the robbery, members of the gang killed five people, including a lawman and a pregnant woman. Six men were convicted of the robbery and murders. John Heath, who was accused of organizing the robbery, was tried separately and sentenced to life in prison. The other five men were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.
State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave was an 1855 murder trial held in the Circuit Court of Callaway County, Missouri, in which a slave woman named Celia was tried for the first-degree murder of her owner, Robert Newsom. Celia was convicted by a jury of twelve white men and sentenced to death. An appeal of the conviction was denied by the Supreme Court of Missouri in December 1855, and Celia was hanged on December 21, 1855.
Mary was an American enslaved teenager who was hanged for the murder of Vienna Brinker, a two-year-old girl she was babysitting. Her case was notable both for her youth and for the extended legal process that preceded her execution. Although her exact age is unknown, it is generally agreed that she is the youngest person to have been put to death in Missouri.
Celia was a slave found guilty of the first-degree murder of Robert Newsom, her master, in Callaway County, Missouri. Her defense team, led by John Jameson, argued an affirmative defense: Celia killed Robert Newsom by accident in self-defense to stop Newsom from raping her, which was a controversial argument at the time. Celia was ultimately executed by hanging following a denied appeal in December 1855. Celia's memory was revitalized by civil rights activist Margaret Bush Wilson who commissioned a portrait of Celia from Solomon Thurman.
Rebecca Ann Littleton Hawkins was an American pioneer woman. After enduring twenty years of beatings by her husband, Williamson Hawkins, she hired her neighbor Henry Garster in 1838 to kill him. The murder led to Garster's hanging, the first in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1839. Rebecca had previously attempted and failed to murder Williamson herself with rat poison, for which she was tried and sentenced to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. The Jackson County community petitioned the governor for her pardon, which he granted shortly before Rebecca's sentence began. The pardon saved her from the fate of being the first woman to be imprisoned in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
References
- 1 2 Baker, David V. (2015). Women and Capital Punishment in the United States: An Analytical History. McFarland. p. 117. ISBN 9780786499502.
- 1 2 3 4 Frazier, Harriet C. (2001). Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865. McFarland. p. 170. ISBN 9780786409778.
- ↑ "In 1828 a slave woman named Annice drowned two of her small children in a stream; she was put upon trial, convicted, and was hung in Liberty, August 23rd following, this being the first legal execution in the county." County History: Clay County, Missouri. Retrieved November 23, 2017.
- ↑ Frazier (2001), p. 255.