2011: Yaqub Ali, stabber

An Iranian criminal named Yaqub (or Yaghoob) Ali was publicly hanged on this date in 2011, at Kaj Square in Tehran’s tony Sa’adat Abad neighborhood.

Not ten weeks earlier, he had in those same environs perpetrated a grisly public stabbing of his ex’s new boyfriend. The crime outraged Iranians the nation with the wildfire online and TV promulgation of video showing the mauled victim, one Mohammad Reza, helplessly bleeding to death on the street in broad daylight, unaided by any passerby — including two policemen who had witnessed the men’s altercation without intervening.

“The entire country was under shock after the incident,” according to a Tehran journalist. “No-one understands how the wounded man could have been left without assistance for so long. There is a general feeling that the incident is symptomatic of the growing insecurity in the country, especially in Tehran.”

The embedded video and the photo of the execution further down this post are very much Mature Content.

The speedy public hanging accordingly attracted a throng of angry onlookers.

According to an AFP wire story, “Separately, the ISNA news agency said that a convicted drug trafficker, identified only by his initials A.A., was executed in a prison in the town of Shirvan in northeast Iran. No other details were given.”

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1866: Charles Carrington

This from the Albany Journal of January 8, 1866, whose subject should not be confused with the prolific Victorian erotica publisher of the same name.

The sheriff in this Buffalo hanging was Oliver J. Eggert, not future president Grover Cleveland who attained that office — and its associated responsibility for hanging convicts — only in 1871.

Charles H. Davis, better known as Carrington, was executed at Buffalo Friday. The Commercial brings the particulars of the execution, which we condense, giving the essential points.

The prisoner was 20 years of age, born in Os[h]kosh, Wis., and his mother lived in Buffalo with one Theodore Carrington (formerly of this city,) and her reputation was bad. Davis had bad associates, and led a hard life for one so young. On the night of the 10th of January last, he with two other fellows was engaged in a burglary, plundering the house of a woman in Buffalo. The woman gave the alarm, and two policemen ran to the spot and gave chase to the thieves. Davis was behind a fence, and as Policeman Dell came up he shot him dead, then fled, and concealed himself, but was soon after arrested. He was tried in February, and the jury failed to agree. He was again tried in June and convicted. The case was carried up, but the higher courts confirmed the proceedings, and the prisoner was executed under the sentence. He escaped from jail and was recaptured sixteen miles from the city. His conduct in jail was good, and up to a few days since he expected a commutation of sentence. No effort was spared to induce Gov. Fenton to interfere, but he stood up manfully for the execution of the law, and for this is entitled to the respect of the people. Shooting a policeman in the discharge of his duty, seeking to arrest the midnight marauder, was a crime that richly merited death, and the Governor would not interfere.

The culprit gave himself up to spiritual advice and made preparation to die, but he protested his innocence to the last.

THE SCAFFOLD.

He mounted the scaffold with a firm step, accompanied by the officiating clergyman, the sexton and his assistant, and Officer Lester.

The clergyman made a short prayer, after which Carrington was told that if he wished to say anything to those present he could do so.

HIS SPEECH.

He rose, holding the Bible in his hand, and spoke, in effect, as follows: —

It was hard to see a young man, not twenty years old, standing there. He had always worked for a living and had never been arrested before. Had lived in Buffalo for some years and thought it was a hard place. On the night in question he had been led away. He said: “I stand with a clear heart, with the Bible in my hand, expecting to meet my Maker in a few minutes.” There was no object in denying his guilt, if he was guilty. He could look all present in the face, with a clear conscience, and declare that he never took the life of any man.

He never felt so easy and contented in his life as now. He had been waiting for his doom for two weeks; he had been so excited that he could not rest, but he was now easy in his mind — being prepared to die. He would rather be in his place than that of the man who cut the rope, though not meaning anything against him (the Sheriff,) or any other person. When he went down (pointing to the trap upon which he stood,) his soul, he trusted, would go up to another and better place.

He had lain in jail almost a year. The jailor, as well as his family and assistants, had always used him well — nobody could have been used better. He would like to talk all day. Those present could stand it, if the weather was cold. He here repeated the assertion of his innocence, and reiterated his former avowal that he bore no malice toward any person. He never took the life of Dill, he declared; there was another man who ought to be standing where he was, though he did not know “for certain,” who committed the crime. He spoke of the evidence adduced against him, and did not think it sufficient for his conviction.

Women of ill-fame, he said, would ruin any man. There were many men now in prison who would not be there had it not been for them. He declared that he had confessed all his sins to the clergyman who had attended him. He had not confessed the guilt of the crime for which he was about to suffer, as he was innocent, and could not confess that. He said, as he had but three minutes to live he could not explain things as he wished and as he would like to. He was here told that five minutes would be given him. He replied that he could not do it in five minutes, and that he might as well go in three. He was sorry to stand where he did, and die as he was about to die. [Here he repeated his former assertion about another person who should stand in his place.]

He was, he continued, about to leave this world, but nobody could say anything against his character. He had been to church and Sunday school, and had never done anything wrong. [Of course we do not pretend to follow him, verbatim, in his remarks, and to give the repetitions in which he indulged. We only seek to give a rough outline of what he said.]

The clergyman here spoke a few words to him in a low tone — which those standing below did not hear — and concluded by shaking hands and bidding him good-bye. He threw to the ground the handkerchief which he held in his hand, meaning it, as we understood him, as a present to Captain Bennett, of police station No. 3, who stood near, and who was instrumental in effecting his arrest.

THE LAST MOMENTS.

The rope, the noose of which had previously been placed about his neck, was now adjusted to the beam above by Officer Kester, and Carrington, looking up to the gallows frame and the staple to which the rope had been attached, said, “It is hard.”

After his arms were pinioned and the black cap drawn over his face, he said, “I expect to die easy, and hope to meet all in a better place than this.” He hoped none would think he was guilty. He was ready to go.

He continued to speak until ten minutes to twelve, when the sexton dropped the handkerchief — the signal was repeated to the sheriff by the jailor — the rope was severed by a blow, and Charles Carrington was no longer of this world.

THE END.

The neck was instantly broken — he dying with very little struggling or apparent pain. Drs. Green, Lathrop, Richards and Hauenstein were present, and it was announced that the pulse had ceased to beat at the end of seven minutes, though the pulsations of the heart continued faintly for about eighteen minutes.

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1963: Stanislaw Jaros, twice-failed assassin

On this date in 1963, Polish electrician Stanislaw Jaros (English Wikipedia entry | Polish) hanged for two assassination attempts on Polish premier Wladyslaw Gomulka.

A figure nearly forgotten outside of Poland and not well-known within, Jaros is mostly written about in Polish as the links in this post will attest. His affair was quietly handled at the time, and that has sufficed to consign him to obscurity even in the post-Communist Poland.

On December 3, 1961, with the First Secretary in the mining town of Zagorze for a St. Barbara’s Day coal mine ribbon-cutter, Jaros set off a homemade bomb concealed in a roadside pole or tree. Gomulka’s motorcade had already passed the spot, but the blast mortally injured one adult bystander, and wounded a child.

A rigorous police investigation captured him, and soon determined that Jaros had been bombing away in merry anonymity for many years — including a 1959 device placed to target Gomulka and visiting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which had failed to detonate. (That incident had been discovered, but hushed up to avoid antagonizing Moscow.)

Jaros professed an inchoate ideological motivation in the form of bitterness against the state police after he’d been brutalized when caught stealing bullets from a factory in the postwar years, but it is difficult to tell where principled anticommunism ends and pyromania begins.

After his release from prison, he returned to live with his mother, never marrying or holding steady employment. His occasional hobby was sabotaging state economic assets with his home-brew explosives. No person was ever injured by one of his mines until the second Gomulka bomb, but he did acknowledge that he certainly was trying to kill the head of state — inspired, he said, by reading about the plots to kill Hitler.

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1945: Robert E. Folkes, the first condemned man to see the Oregon gas chamber

(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)

“I have nothing to say except that I am innocent. It’s easier to convict a Negro than a white person. So long everybody.”

Robert E. Folkes, convicted of murder, gas chamber, Oregon.
Executed January 5, 1945

Folkes, age twenty-three, was convicted of slashing a woman’s throat on a Southern Pacific train while working as a cook. The Associated Press described him as “the first condemned man to see the chamber,” as Folkes was the first prisoner to ever walk into the Oregon gas chamber without a blindfold on.

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1771: Captain David Ferguson, for the murder of his cabin-boy

(From the Newgate Calendar)

At the Admiralty sessions, held at the Old Bailey, on the 17th of December, 1770, David Ferguson, master of the merchant-ship Betsey, was tried for the murder of his cabin-boy, a lad about thirteen years of age, during his voyage from Virginia to Antigua.

It appeared that four of Captain Ferguson’s crew died, and he was charged with the murder of them all. On one of these alleged crimes he was tried in Virginia, and acquitted.

Lord Botetourt, the then governor of that colony, transmitted the proceedings of the Court to the secretary of state for foreign affairs in London, with a favourable opinion thereon.

Though we have had too frequent occasion, in the course of this work, to state the wanton exercise of that power necessarily given to commanders at sea, yet we also know that the crew are too often ready to construe necessary correction into cruelty; and, should any of the hands corrected by the captain die, even by accident, or the common course of nature, they are sure to aggravate the affair, and persecute their commander.

The ship Betsey sailed from the Capes of Virginia in the depth of winter, when the cold is intense to a degree, of which Englishmen have hardly a conception. Heavy gales of wind and long falls of snow succeed each other, day after day. The shrouds and rigging are incrusted with ice, and they often snap from the tension thereby occasioned. The masts, thus deprived of their principal support, are often ready to fall by the board, while the deck is deeply covered with snow.

(Note: A shocking instance of the sad effects of these sudden snow storms, on the coast of America, happened to the officers of the Assistance man-of-war, lying off Sandy Hook, near New York, in the year 1784. Six seamen of that ship confederated to desert, jumped into the yawl, and pushed off from the ship towards the shore. Another boat was got ready for a pursuit, and was manned by the first lieutenant, eleven other officers, and one seaman. Before they could come up with the deserters, a snow storm came on, which, as is often the case, so overpowered them, and so darkened the horizon, that they lost sight both of the yawl and the ship, and were all, except one, next morning found dead on the beach, near Middleton Point, in New Jersey, most of them sticking in the mud.)

In such cases seamen do their duty with much reluctance; and, when their extravagance in harbour has deprived them of the means of laying in an allowance of brandy and tobacco, they grow clamorous to their captain for those indispensable articles, with which he is not bound to supply them; in fact, he generally provides little more than may serve himself.

Captain Ferguson’s crew, thus situated, were often remiss in their duty; and, on several occasions, his utmost exertions were called upon for the safety of his ship; but that he exceeded the bounds of moderation must be admitted, from his conviction by an English jury of the murder of his cabin-boy.

Perhaps the severity of the season, the crew being unprovided with liquor, and also without sufficient warm clothing, contributed more to the death of the remaining three that perished than correction. The survivors imputed the murder of them all to the cruelty of their captain.

To come to the charge on which he was convicted: it was proved that he had frequently beat the boy in a manner far too severe for his tender years to bear; and that he had knocked him down, and then stamped upon him. After this barbarous usage he confined him almost an hour upon deck, to the weather-side of his long- boat, when the weather was so severe that snow covered the deck, and the shrouds were snapping. That he again pushed him down, and trod upon him with both his feet.

The seamen said that the boy provoked this punishment by coming upon deck with only one stocking on. The sufferer did not make complaint of the effects of his usage until eleven o’clock at night; and the next day he fell into the hold, and was missing five hours. He was found dead upon the ballast.

In his defence Captain Ferguson proved the distress his ship was in from the weather, and the refractory spirit of the crew, several of whom he was obliged to force to their duty.

On the passage of the Betsey home to England, Major Watson and Captain Lilly, who were passengers, proved that she was wrecked on the coast of Sussex; and that it was owing to the resolution and good conduct of Captain Ferguson that they, together with the crew, were saved. It also appeared that many vessels at sea with the Betsey, on the coast of America, had several of their crews frost-bitten, which turning to gangrene, they died. The inference attempted to be made was that the frost had killed the cabin-boy.

Several respectable merchants gave the prisoner a good character for integrity and humanity; but the jury found him guilty, and sentence of death was passed upon him accordingly.

Considerable interest was made to obtain the royal mercy, and (a circumstance seldom granted to murderers, and then only when some doubts arise in the minds of the privy council on the case) he received a respite.

On the 4th of January, 1771, eighteen days after conviction, the warrant arrived for his execution; and the next day, attended by the marshal of the Admiralty, carrying a silver oar, he was carried from Newgate to Execution Dock, and there hanged.

His body was hung in chains upon the marshes of the river Thames.

Thus perished Captain David Ferguson, a victim to his ungovernable passion, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.

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1655: Jane Hopkins, Bermuda’s last known witch execution

The last known witchcraft execution in Bermuda history occurred on this date in 1655.

The isolated English colony was at this period laboring under social crisis, or a set of crises. It had been declared in rebellion by Cromwell‘s parliament for taking too-vigorous umbrage at King Charles‘s execution. Its official C of E ministers were being challenged by breakaway independents of various stripes of Puritanism. The tobacco crop blew away one year. And it may have had a perilous gender imbalance (too many women, too few men: Bermuda definitely did have this problem in the 18th century). (Source for this whole paragraph) Perhaps it’s no surprise that its Puritan governor* would oversee a spasm of witch persecutions from 1651 to 1655.

Jane Hopkins and another woman named Elizabeth Page were both stuck in the dock on this occasion. They’d recently arrived on the Mayflower** and the captain “did vehemently suspect them to be witches,” seemingly on account of their traveling sans male.

Page bewitched the ship’s helm according to a witness who beheld her run “her finger over the compas, And yt ran round from North to South, And turned backe againe.” That’s pretty impressively infernal, but here in the 17th century they knew to look for some hard forensic evidence … so a group of matrons in Bermuda was empaneled to feel Elizabeth Page up in search of a witch’s teat. Much to the woman’s good fortune, she possessed “not any marke or spotts or signes … only something more than ordinary (in a certain place).” She was accordingly acquitted.

Jane Hopkins’ body was not so ordinary.

The eyewitness testimony against her was a fellow-passenger to whom Hopkins sighed that she wished God would send some sign clearing up all these suspicions of devilry. A rat — ubiquitous in seafaring life, mind you — promptly appeared. To add to this damning divine indictment, a peeping tom on the ship watching her dress had noticed some sort of mark on her shoulder.

Sure enough, Hopkins’s gropers discerned “in her mouth a suspicitious marke and under her arme she hath a dugge or Teat, And upon her shoulder a wart, and upon her necke another wart … all these were insensible when they were prickt.” With this sort of slam-dunk evidence, the jurymen could hardly do otherwise than agree that Hopkins “hath felonously and wickedly consulted and covenanted with the Devil & him hath suckled and fedd contrary to nature & the law of God and man, as doth appeare by markes & signes upon her body.” (The full trial records can be perused here)

It’s not absolutely certain that Jane Hopkins was the last person executed in Bermuda for witchcraft. There were several additional witch prosecutions to follow in the 17th century: some ended in acquittal, others in conviction. There was even at least one more death sentence, but that hanging was stayed and the final disposition of the case is unknown.

* Governor Josiah Forster’s legacy for the isles — other than hanging witches — was the “Forster Chair” made in his honor.

** Not the same ship as the Mayflower of Plymouth Colony fame.

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1638: Four Frenchmen in effigy

We have touched in the past on the odd practice of executing effigies of criminals, a custom for which France had a particular penchant.

On this date in 1638, mannequins of Andre Armand, Gabriel Bonnaud, Sebastien Mareschal, and Simon Armand were “hanged” for murder.

As described in this French text, proceedings were delayed when, the previous November, the wife and mother-in-law of one of the absconded offenders appealed the sentence in their own inimitable way: by vandalizing the mannequins.

Thanks to Sonechka for deciphering the archaic French.

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1917: Sub-Lt. Edwin Dyett, shot at dawn

On this date in 1917, Edwin Dyett was shot for desertion and cowardice.

After the disastrously ineffective Somme offensive in late 1916, British Field Marshal Douglas Haig decided to pick up the men’s spirits. And what better way to motivate than by shooting more officers?

If one proceeds from the premise of the British brass that the main problem with its military ineffectiveness was the men in the field, there was something in the cruelly “progressive” about the order: luckless enlisted fellows from the lower classes were smoking last cigarettes by the bushel, but gentry-stock officers were more liable to get the kid-gloves treatment .

Haig was taking the kid gloves off.

“A soldier’s tale cut in stone to melt all hearts,” said Winston Churchill of this pathbreaking novel thought to be based on Edwin Dyett. The first novel about executed World War I deserters, it is thought to have influenced later portrayals of such executions and the sub-heroic literary context for the Great War.

Within two months of that order, our man Dyett was up against the stake at St. Firmin, France — perhaps the most famous shooting among the officer corps.

Perhaps presuming upon the traditional leniency extended to the better classes, Dyett had little inkling of his fate during the weeks after his arrest. He’d been collared during the aforementioned Somme campaign for “deserting” for two days when he’d taken umbrage at being directed to the front by an inferior officer and instead returned to headquarters for orders.

As late as Christmas Eve, he was still keeping his parents in the dark, certain that the misunderstanding was not enough to even “cause a sitting.”

That sitting, however, occurred forthwith on Boxing Day, with only a half-hour for the defense to prepare. That defense was less than robust, and the court clearly disinclined to a sympathetic reading of the circumstances.

Dyett had only just turned 21, but clemency appeals around youth and the confusion of the situation would cut no ice. “”If a private behaved as he did,” wrote the officer charged to review it, “it is highly likely he would be shot.”

Lt. Dyett had only a single evening from hearing the bad news to prepare himself for what must have seemed to him a shocking turn of events. This time, he posted a different sort of missive to the home front.

Dearest Mother Mine, I hope by now you will have had the news. Dearest, I am leaving you now because He has willed it. My sorrow tonight is for the trouble I have caused you and dad. Please excuse any mistakes, but if it were not for the kind support of the Rev. W.C. — who is with me tonight, I should not be able to write myself. I should like you to write to him, as he has been my friend. I am leaving all my effects to you, dearest; will you give a little — half the sum you have of mine? Give dear Dad my love and wish him luck. I feel for you so much and I am sorry for bringing dishonour upon you all. Give — my love. She will, I expect, understand – and give her back the presents, photos, cards, etc., she has sent me, poor girl. So now dearest Mother, I must close. May God bless and protect you all now and for evermore. Amen.

Dad didn’t take it with the stiff upper lip; after a futile campaign to clear the boy, he renounced his citizenship and emigrated to America.

The Shot At Dawn site dedicated to executed first World War soldiers maintains a detailed (and very pro-Dyett) page about our day’s principal. There’s also a recent nonfiction book, Death for Desertion, which pleads Dyett’s case.

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1993: Westley Allan Dodd, child molester

Just after midnight this date in 1993, Washington state carried out the first legal hanging in the U.S. since 1965.

Pornstached child molester Westley Allan Dodd is the textbook “incorrigible sex offender” case study. That’s certainly how Dodd himself asked us to interpret him.

“I have said all along the system does not work,” he wrote of his long career in pedophilia, notoriously unrehabilitated by the criminal justice system. “I knew what I was doing, I knew it was wrong. I knew I could get the death penalty if caught.”

From the usual humble beginnings in teenage child-groping, and despite several arrests over the years, Dodd devolved into abducting young boys to actualize horrific fantasies he did not scruple to jot in his journal.

Incident 3 will die maybe this way: He’ll be tied down as Lee was in Incident 2. Instead of placing a bag over his head as had previously planned, I’ll tape his mouth shut with duct tape. Then, when ready, I’ll use a clothespin or something to plug his nose. That way I can sit back, take pictures and watch him die instead of concentrating on my hands or the rope tight around his neck — that would also eliminate the rope burns on the neck . . . I can clearly see his face and eyes now…

He suspects nothing now. Will probably wait until morning to kill him. That way his body will be fairly fresh for experiments after work. I’ll suffocate him in his sleep when I wake up for work (if I sleep).

In short: not the nicest guy, though also a monster as much pathetic as diabolic.

Dodd pleaded guilty to his three sex murders, and fought for his own execution. The state of Washington obliged him in a speedy three years.

Although the Evergreen State had lethal injection on the books, Dodd also availed his right to select its holdover alternative method, hanging.

Those kids didn’t get a nice, neat painless easy death. Why should I?

Which justification’s nobility (such as it is) is considerably more socially gratifying than, say, a hankering for the gallows’ post-mortem priapism.

(He didn’t get everything, though: they turned down his request to televise the hanging.)

Not content with his headline-grabbing mode of departing the world, Dodd had a hand in a statutory milestone, too. His stranger-danger nightmare case surfacing in the fall of 1989 was part of the background that drove Washington to pass the nation’s first sexually violent predator law, the Community Protection Act of 1990.*

Trutv.com’s Crime Library has a good deal more about the mind of this particular maniac.

* It was really Earl Shriner’s crimes more than Dodd’s that led most directly to the new law, which licensed indefinite “civil commitment” of sexually violent predators after the completion of their criminal sentences.

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1527: Felix Manz, the first Anabaptist martyr

On this date in 1527, Anabaptist Felix Manz was trussed hand and foot and shoved into the Limmat in Zurich — the first martyr of the Radical Reformation.

As the Protestant Reformation made theologians of everyone without a concomitant social embrace of religious pluralism, it wasn’t long before men who would have been fire-eating heretics in Catholic eyes a decade before were turning their swords on one another for deviation from their own new orthodoxies.

As the Martyrs Mirror put it,

this was also the century in which Luther in Germany, Zwingli in Switzerland, and afterwards Calvin in France, began to reform the Roman church; and to deny, oppose and contend with the authority of God’s holy Word against the supposed power of the Roman Pope, and many papal superstitions, however, in order to avoid too great dissatisfaction, as it seems, they remained in the matter of infant baptism, in agreement with the Roman church

They also have retained with the papists, the swearing of oaths, the office of secular authority, war against enemies, and sometimes also against each other, etc.

In Zurich, former Zwingli follower Felix Manz (sometimes spelled Felix Mantz) co-founded a splinter group of Anabaptists and picked a fight with city hall over adult vs. infant baptism.

Zwingli has been dinged by many a true believer then and now for his compromises, but the man had a city to run and better reason to worry about the movements of nearby Catholic armies than an endless disputation over baptism. When the city had had enough, it declared drowning for adult baptism (“rebaptism,” to its opponents). Water for water, see?

Manz got first in line. (He wouldn’t be the last.)

Zwingli’s eventual successor recorded the scene.

As he came down from the Wellenberg to the fish market and was led through the shambles to the boat, he praised God that he was about to die for His truth. For Anabaptism was right, and founded on the Word of God, and Christ had foretold that His followers would suffer for the truth’s sake. And the like discourse he urged much, contradicting the preacher who attended him. On the way his mother and brother came to him, and exhorted him to be stedfast; and he persevered in his folly, even to the end. When he was bound upon the hurdle, and was about to be thrown into the stream by the executioner, he sang with a loud voice: “In manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” (“Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”) And herewith was he drawn into the water by the executioner, and drowned.


Felix Manz drowned in the Limmat.

If this dispute seems rather shallow cause for spilling human blood, it’s part of a fathomless theological debate only now becoming water — ahem — under the bridge.

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