(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this day in 1945, mere weeks before Germany’s surrender, U.S. Private Benjamin F. Hopper of the 3170th Quartermaster Service Company was judicially hanged for murder.
“The case was straightforward,” notes French L. MacLean in his book The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II. He describes it as “an excellent example of stupid situations that soldiers could get themselves into, if they had been drinking and did not consider the consequences of their actions.”
Quite so.
On the night of the crime, Hopper and four other soldiers were hanging out in a cafe in the town of Welkenraedt, Belgium, just outside of Liege. Just after midnight, Hopper got into an argument with one of his companions, Private Randolph Jackson Jr.
The two men argued frequently and the other three in the group were used to it, and didn’t take them seriously when they started threatening to shoot each other. Finally Private Jackson handed Hopper his gun, presumably daring him to shoot. Hopper shot him dead, then told the witnesses, “You didn’t see nothing.”
At his court-martial, he did not testify and there was no defense. Hopper protested about this later, saying he didn’t get a fair trial: “My Defense Counsel said he was going to tell them. Told me to stay silent. So, he got up and told them I wasn’t guilty. He didn’t say much else.”
Unlike many military men sentenced to death during World War II, Hopper showed remorse for what he had done. Still he asked for leniency and penned a letter to General Eisenhower beginning:
Gen. Eisenhower
Dear Sir, I was tried for mudder and the court find me guilty and sences me to be hong Sir. And Sir I am asking you to please Sir look in to this mader close Sir for me because I have made a great mucstake Sir and wont you give me another chanch in the armey.
Hopper’s IQ tested at 50, putting him in the moderately mentally retarded range, and a psychiatrist who evaluated him stated he had a mental age of about nine, “bordering on mental deficiency.” Someone with that degree of mental disability would not be permitted to be executed today.
Some people argued that the death sentence should be commuted to life in prison, citing Hopper’s intellectual impairment and the lack of premeditation. Weighing against that was his prior recorded offenses of going AWOL and being in Liege without an official pass. The Brigadier General who reviewed the case recommended that the death sentence stand, and Eisenhower agreed.
Hopper died on a clear, warm morning in Le Mans, France. At 11:00 a.m., his hands and ankles were bound and he said his last words to the chaplain: “Father, I would like you to write to my mother.” The trap sprung at 11:01 and Hopper was pronounced dead at 11:24.
On this day..
- 2015: Mohammad Qamaruzzaman, militia commander
- 1827: Sarah Jones, firm infanticide
- 1775: A robber under the apartments of Joseph Jekyll
- 1730: A Natchez woman tortured to death at New Orleans
- 1947: Louise Peete, Tiger Woman
- 1859: The martyrs of Tacubaya
- 1944: Joseph Epstein, Polish Communist French Resistance hero
- 1612: Refried Edward Wightman
- 1705: Captain Thomas Green and two of his crew on the Worcester
- 1554: Thomas Wyatt the Younger, with the Queen's life in his hands
- 2003: Three ferry hijackers
- 1670: Major Thomas Weir, a Puritan with a double life