Related Research Articles
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and is the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging is in Homer's Odyssey. Hanging is also a method of suicide.
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom predates the formation of the UK, having been used within the British Isles from ancient times until the second half of the 20th century. The last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging, and took place in 1964; capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969. Although unused, the death penalty remained a legally defined punishment for certain offences such as treason until it was completely abolished in 1998; the last execution for treason took place in 1946. In 2004 the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights became binding on the United Kingdom; it prohibits the restoration of the death penalty as long as the UK is a party to the convention.
Leo Max Frank was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national attention. His kidnapping from prison and lynching two years later, in response to the commutation of his death sentence, became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding antisemitism and racism. Today, the consensus of researchers is that Frank was wrongly convicted and Jim Conley was likely the actual murderer.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Arkansas.
Henry Plummer (1832–1864) was a prospector, lawman, and outlaw in the American West in the 1850s and 1860s, who was known to have killed several men. He was elected sheriff of Bannack, Montana, in 1863 and served until 1864, during which period he was accused of being the leader of a "road agent" gang of outlaws known as the "Innocents," who preyed on shipments from Virginia City, Montana to other areas. In response some leaders in Virginia City formed the Vigilance Committee of Alder Gulch and began to take action against Plummer's gang, gaining confessions from a couple of men they arrested in early January 1864. On January 10, 1864, Plummer and two associates were arrested in Bannack by a company of the Vigilantes and summarily hanged. Plummer was given a posthumous trial in 1993 which led to a mistrial. The jury was split 6–6.
Isaac Charles Parker, also known as “Hanging Judge” Parker, was an American politician and jurist. He served as a United States representative from Missouri and was appointed as the first United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, which also had jurisdiction over Indian Territory.
Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished. All valid death sentences as of 2020 have since been commuted to life sentences by governor Jared Polis.
The Fall Creek massacre refers to the slaughter of 9 Native Americans—two men, three women, two boys, and two girls—of uncertain tribal origin on March 22, 1824, by seven white settlers in Madison County, Indiana. The tribal band was living in an encampment along Deer Lick Creek, near the falls at Fall Creek, the site of present-day Pendleton, Indiana. The incident sparked national attention as details of the massacre and trial were reported in newspapers of the day. This was the first documented case in which white Americans were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed for the murder of Native Americans under U.S. law. Of the seven white men who participated in the crime, six were captured. The other white man, Thomas Harper, was never apprehended. Four of the men were charged with murder and the other two testified for the prosecution. The four accused men were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. James Hudson was hanged on January 12, 1825, in Madison County, and Andrew Sawyer and John Townsend Bridge Sr. were hanged on June 3, 1825. Moments before he could be executed, James B. Ray, the governor of Indiana, pardoned John Townsend Bridge Jr., the eighteen-year-old son of John Bridge Sr., due to his age, remorse, and the influence the others may have had on his involvement in the murders.
Charles Noel Brown and Charles Edwin Kelley were American spree killers who killed three people and wounded three others in a five-day, three-state rampage in February 1961. The duo, who said they shot the victims to avoid leaving witnesses, were labeled the "Mad Dog Killers". Sentenced to death for a murder committed in Iowa, Brown and Kelley became the second-to-last and last people executed in the state, respectively. Iowa abolished capital punishment in 1965.
On March 19, 1906, Ed Johnson, a young African American man, was murdered by a lynch mob in his home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had been sentenced to death for the rape of Nevada Taylor, but Justice John Marshall Harlan of the United States Supreme Court had issued a stay of execution. To prevent delay or avoidance of execution, a mob broke into the jail where Johnson was held, and abducted and lynched him from the Walnut Street Bridge.
Hanging has been practiced legally in the United States of America from before the nation's birth, up to 1972 when the United States Supreme Court found capital punishment to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Four years later, the Supreme Court overturned its previous ruling, and in 1976, capital punishment was again legalized in the United States. As of 2021, three states have laws that specify hanging as an available secondary method of execution.
The history of vigilante justice and the Montana Vigilantes began in 1863 in what was at the time a remote part of eastern Idaho Territory. Vigilante activities continued, although somewhat sporadically, through the Montana Territorial period until the territory became the state of Montana on November 8, 1889. Vigilantism arose because territorial law enforcement and the courts had very little power in the remote mining camps during the territorial period.
William Jackson "Jack" Marion was an American man who was convicted of the 1872 murder of John Cameron, a Kansas native and a friend. Marion and Cameron were railroad workers who embarked on a trip to Kansas to work on the railroad in 1872. During the trip, Cameron went missing, spurring an investigation into his whereabouts. In 1873, a decomposing body was discovered in a Nebraska riverbed donning clothing that some claimed to have belonged to Cameron, leading authorities to believe that Marion may have murdered Cameron. Years later, following a two-month trial and conviction, the state of Nebraska executed Marion for Cameron's murder in 1887.
The Bellevue War was a shootout between a posse led by Sheriff W. A. Warren and Thomas Cox against a group led by W. W. Brown that took place in Bellevue, Jackson County, Iowa Territory, on April 1, 1840. A large mural made by local artists commemorates the incident at the site of Brown's Hotel where it occurred. Political tensions in Bellevue dated back to 1837, when Yankee businessmen arrived at the town, causing tensions with the original settlers. The original settlers banded with wealthy hotelier W. W. Brown, who provided them with credit and an opportunity to work. A shooting on January 8, 1840, further intensified the situation.
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.
Capital punishment has been abolished in Iowa since 1965. Forty-five men were executed by hanging in Iowa between 1834 and 1963 for crimes including murder, rape, and robbery.
Capital punishment was abolished in 1957 in Alaska. Between December 28, 1869, and April 14, 1950, between the Department, District, and Territory of Alaska, twelve felons, all male, were executed by hanging for murder, robbery, and other crimes. Some were European, some were Native American, and two were African. The territorial legislature abolished capital punishment in 1957 during preparations for statehood, making Alaska the first in the West Coast of the United States to outlaw executions, along with Hawaii, which did the same.
James Harvey and Joe Jordan were two African-American men who were lynched on July 1, 1922, in Liberty County, Georgia, United States. They were seized by a mob of about 50 people and hanged while being transported by police from Wayne County to a jail in Savannah. Investigations by the NAACP showed that the police involved were complicit in their abduction by the mob. Twenty-two men were later indicted for the lynching, with four convicted.
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.
The hanging of Charles Blackman occurred in Ellaville, Georgia, on January 25, 1889. Stonewall Tondee, a white man, had been murdered on September 5, 1885. Charles Blackman, an African-American man, was tried and convicted for the murder in three trials by all-white, "gentleman" juries. The Georgia Supreme Court twice granted Blackman a new trial, but he was convicted and sentenced to hang a third time in September 1888. Blackman was twice granted respite by Georgia Governor John Brown Gordon after the third trial, which delayed Blackman’s execution by three months. Blackman maintained his innocence until his public execution and insisted that he was never given an impartial trial. 5,000 people from across South Georgia travelled to Ellaville, a town of a few hundreds, to witness the hanging. Telegraph wires were cut to ensure that messages from Governor Gordon and other state officials would not be transmitted and interfere with the hanging.
References
- 1 2 3 L. Moeller, Hubert (1966). 30 Stories of Iowa. p. 12.
- ↑ "The Trial and Execution of Patrick O'Connor". The Palimpsest. September 1920. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
- 1 2 3 Arthur Goodspeed, Weston (1904). Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming. pp. 25–26.
- ↑ "Frontier Justice". Iowa PBS. 1978. Retrieved June 6, 2020.