The last execution in the state of New York occurred on this date in 1963 when Harlem murderer Eddie Lee Mays — who shot a woman dead in the course of a pub stickup — went to the mercy seat at Sing Sing prison.
It was also the last execution in Sing Sing’s notorious electric chair, here elevated to the artistic canon by Andy Warhol‘s 1960s series of electric chair images. Warhol based his arresting view of the apparatus on press photos circulated around the 1953 electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the same device.
New York’s once-robust death penalty statutes and habits disappeared along with the rest of America’s by the late 1960s; her last executioner, Dow B. Hover — the guy who threw the switch on Eddie Mays — committed suicide in 1990.
The Empire State ditched its death penalty laws in 1984, briefly reinstated them in 1995, but executed no prisoners before everything was ruled out constitutionally in 2004.
By coincidence, August 15, 1963 was also the date of the last execution in Scotland.
On this day..
- 1905: Thomas Tattersall, taking the hangman with him
- 1293: Capocchio, Inferno-bound
- 1720: Matthew Tompkins, Daniel Lazenby, and Maurice Fitzgerald
- 1741: Juan de la Silva, Spanish Negro
- 1817: Four arsonists in the rain
- 1714: Constantine Brancoveanu and his sons
- 1812: William Booth, forger
- 1941: Josef Jakobs, the last executed in the Tower of London
- 2010: Two Afghan adulterers stoned
- 2004: Atefah Rajabi Shalaaleh, schoolgirl
- 1986: The Stoning of Soraya M
- 1963: Henry John Burnett, Scotland's last hanging
Interesting that two of the executioners in New York committed suicide.