Tag Archives: may 24

1726: Étienne-Benjamin Deschauffours

Posted on by

Etienne-Benjamin Deschauffours (or Duchauffour) was burned at Paris’s Place de Greve on this date in 1726.

Although executed on a sodomy conviction, it wasn’t mere same-sex indulgence but a monstrous, Jeffrey Epstein-like project of elite sexual depravity that cinched his fate, at least if the trial records are to be believed.

“Under a variety of pseudonyms, and in various lodgings, Deschauffours earned a living by spotting ‘likely lads’ and supplying them on payment of commission to wealthy clients, both French and foreign (perhaps some 200 in all),” quoth Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II.

Deschaffours frequently tried out his finds (young and very young), and found his pleasure in their pain (it is difficult not to think forward to the Marquise de Sade, or backward to Gilles de Rais). He castrated a young Italian whose admirer hoped this might render him more compliant.

Reportedly, he procured these semi- or unwilling charges for overmighty magnates who were — as with the previous century’s Affair of the Poisons — far too powerful and numerous to bring to book without inviting systemic crisis. Their vices thus remain mere rumors even down to our remove of posterity, for whom shadowy and redacted documentation yet conceals god knows what monstrosities.

Jim Chevallier, in The Old Regime Police Blotter II: Sodomites, Tribads and “Crimes Against Nature”, notes a 1734 doggerel capturing the scandal-mongering that became as the popular impression of the affair.

Du Chauffour and d’Oswal
are two unparalleled buggers,

There’s the resemblance.

One burned for his crime,
The other was made cardinal,

There’s the difference.

On this day..

1918: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.

Posted on by

From the Pueblo Chieftain (May 25, 1918):

Salt Lake City, May 24. — Howard H. Deweese, who was shot here today for the murder of his wife, Fannie Fisher Deweese, left a grim legacy for his wife’s former husband. It is a silk handkerchief and the bullets which passed thru the heart of Deweese, first passed thru the bit of silk which he had pinned over his chest.

Before his execution Deweese secured the promise of the warden of the state prison to forward the handkerchief, together with a note to Fisher in New York. The letter, dated at the Utah state penitentiary last Monday, reads:

Mr. H.W. Fisher, 150 Second avenue, New York:

Greetings:

In accordance with customs observed by certain people, I herewith conform with precedents and law governing the conduct of aforesaid people. I have rigidly adhered to my vows. You have violated yours. Therefore, put your house in order. The allotted time customary in such cases is yours. The souvenir enclosed herewith (by the warden of this institution) will doubtless serve to convince you that time, distance, political influence or money cannot change the inexorable workings of things decreed by men who do not hesitate in risking all, even life, for things they have sworn to uphold.

The U.B.C. thru one who has proven loyal, bids you ‘prepare.’ It is written.

(Signed)
J.E.W.

The initials affixed at the bottom of the note stand for Deweese’s alias — J.E. Warren. The “U.B.C.” Deweese explained just before his execution, was the initials of the “Universal Brotherhood Club of New York.”

From the Kansas City Star (May 24, 1918):

DALLAS, TEX. May 23. — A claim that the idea for the Red Cross poster, “The Greatest Mother in the World,” originated in the mind of Leonard Dodd, who with Walter Stevenson is sentenced to hang here tomorrow for murder, was placed here today before the state board of pardons at Austin as part of a plea for commutation of sentence.

Council for Dodd informed the board a draft of the poster had been sent by him to the Red Cross headquarters at Washington and that it was later drawn by an Eastern artist. Dodd, Stevenson, and Emmett Vestal, also convicted of murder, will be hanged tomorrow unless Governor Hobby commutes their sentences. [Dodd and Stevenson hanged; as for Vestal’s … read on. -ed.]

From the Arizona Republic, Jan. 1, 1955:

Evangelist Emmett T. (Texas Slim) Vestal, a man twice condemned to die in the electric chair, is in Phoenix conducting a revival, and illustrating that “no matter how low a man can get, he still can be saved by following Christ.”

For more than 20 years, Mr. Vestal has been preaching in churches throughout the country, and recounting his experiences as bank robber, drug addict, and gang member.

Services will be conducted every night through next Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Revival Center, 902 N. 24th St.

In 1917 he shot a rival gang leader who tried to ambush him near Victoria, Tex. and was sentenced to die May 24, 1918. Five minutes before the hanging, he was granted a reprieve by the late Governor W.P. Hobby.

He returned to prison, contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a state hospital from which he escaped. Law officials found him in 1926 in St. Louis and took him back to Texas for a new trial because the state had changed his sentence from hanging to electrocution.

He was again convicted and sentenced to die, this time in the electric chair. Three days before the electrocution, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the late Governor Miriam (Ma) Ferguson. Three days after that she granted him a full pardon.

Methodist church workers taught him to read and write and gave him Christian education while he was in prison. After his release he began his evangelic career. He was ordained a baptist minister.

On this day..

1989: Stephen McCoy, botched

Posted on by

Rapist-murderer Stephen McCoy succumbed to a badly botched lethal injection in Texas on this date in 1989.

McCoy, according to the Death Penalty Information Center,

had such a violent physical reaction to the drugs (heaving chest, gasping, choking, back arching off the gurney, etc.) that one of the witnesses (male) fainted, crashing into and knocking over another witness. Houston attorney Karen Zellars, who represented McCoy and witnessed the execution, thought the fainting would catalyze a chain reaction. The Texas Attorney General admitted the inmate “seemed to have had a somewhat stronger reaction,” adding, “The drugs might have been administered in a heavier dose or more rapidly.”

McCoy with two accomplices, James Paster and Gary LeBlanc, had committed a cut-rate murder for hire, grossing $1,000 to shoot someone’s ex-husband in the parking lot of a club. Paster, who actually pulled the trigger on that murder, suggested to his mates that they would all rest a little easier in one another’s silence if they jointly committed two more homicides, with each taking his own turn as the murderer.

To that end, they kidnapped one Diana Oliver in November 1980, gang-raped her, and had McCoy take her life with an improvised garrote. Their third victim was 18-year-old Cynthia Johnson, abducted from her stranded vehicle on New Year’s Eve 1980, and also raped and strangled to death.

Paster was also executed. LeBlanc copped a long prison sentence for cooperating with the state against his accomplices.

On this day..

1878: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.

Posted on by

From the Jackson (Mich.) Weekly Citizen:

A WOMAN’S DEATH AVENGED

NEW ORLEANS, May 24. — To-day, between the hours of 1 and 2 o’clock p.m., at the parish seat of Union parish, Louisiana, Jesse Walker, a colored man, was executed for the murder of Violet Simmons.

On the 12th of April last he was convicted. The evidence against him was circumstantial. At the time of his arrest, however, he made a confession of the crime, which he afterward claimed was forced from him.

A reporter, in company with Sheriff Pleasant, Rev. Mr. Parvin, Judge Ruthland and Capt. Raburn, visited the doomed man on yesterday evening. Walker was 22 years old, weighed 175 pounds, was very black, rather sullen and stupid. He appeared perfectly composed.

After visitors had expressed their sympathy and informed him of their mission, he made a

STATEMENT.

I know I must die to-morrow. They are punishing me for something I did not do. God knows I am as innocent as the angels of heaven, and I do not know who killed Violet.

About three years ago I drew my gun on Mr. John Simmons for trying to shoot my father. He has been mad at me ever since. I think that is the reason he swore so hard against me.

On the night Violet was killed, at the request of my brother and Noah Gandes, I started over to Aunt Wine’s to tell the girls that there would be a party that night.

It was about dark. I had gone two hundred yards when I saw Violet lying in the road.

We lived in the same yard, were cousins, and as we were often playing with each other, I went up to her and called her. She did not answer. I then ran back to the house, and called her mother. I was arrested.

At an early hour this morning

THE CROWD

began to gather from this and adjoining parishes, and by noon 3,000 people, the majority of whom were colored, assembled to witness the execution.

The sheriff had taken every precaution to preserve the peace and order. All of the saloons were closed and forty deputies were sworn in.

On Friday, at 12 m., the writer entered the jail in company with the parties named, and a sister of the prisoner. The meeting between

THE DOOMED MAN AND HIS SISTER

was very sad. She told him how often she had talked to him and prayed for him. He still protested his innocence, and said he was going to meet his mother in heaven. He inquired after his kinsfolks, and gave instructions with reference to his burial.

After giving his ring to his sister he bade her good bye, and was conducted to the debtor’s room and there very quietly dressed.

He then stated that he had evidence that he was

AT PEACE WITH GOD.

He appeared perfectly cool and collected. At 10 minutes to 1 o’clock p.m., the prisoner ascended the platform, which was erected about two hundred yards from the jail.

Rev. Mr. Britt offered up an earnest prayer, and the sobs and groans of women and children were heard from every direction.

The sheriff addressed the audience, appealing to them to keep order. The prisoner then came to the front of the platform and said:

None but me and my God knows that I am innocent. If the man who prosecuted me would have told the truth, I think he would have known something about the killing of Violet. I do not blame my lawyer. I do not blame the jury; they believe the prosecution, and have murdered me. I tried to get Lawyer Ellis to defend me. If he had defended me I would have been acquitted, but I do not blame him. I do not blame the sheriff or jailor, or the men who built the gallows. I have been wrecked, but have been praying for one week. I expect to be in heaven in less than a half hour. I want all my friends to pray for me as I have prayed for myself. I advise all young people to

QUIT GOING TO PARTIES, AND SERVE THE LORD.

I have never killed any one, but if I had my pistol when Simmons accused me of killing Violet and arrested me I would have killed him; but I thank God I did not, for then I would have never entered the kingdom of heaven.

Prince Jones (colored) then ascended the platform, and prayed fervently for the doomed man. The lips of the prisoner moved as in prayer, and tears come in his eyes.

The Sheriff then read the death warrant, during which time the prisoner retained his self-possession. At twenty minutes to 2, the rope was cut, the drop fell, and Jessie Walker was no more on earth.

Henry Roberts.

A PUBLIC EXECUTION.

SHELBY, N.C., May 24. — Henry Roberts (colored) was hanged here, publicly, to-day, at 1 p.m. There were four thousand persons present. The drop fell three feet, and his neck was unbroken. He hung thirty minutes.

Roberts reiterated his innocence, and said: “Jesus will gather me in his arms, and heaven will be my home. Chris died; so must I. I love all the world, and forgive all my enemies.”

He said all of the witnesses swore falsely, and that they have to answer for it hereafter. Roberts spoke ten minutes. His last words were: “I bid you all farewell.”

HIS CRIME.

On Feb. 1, 1877, the body of Gus Ware, a well-to-do colored farmer, living near King’s Hill, in Cleveland county, was found on the Charlotte and Atlanta Air-Line railroad, near htat point, mutilated in a horrible manner.

The deceased was in the habit of drinking too freely, and it was at first supposed that while drunk he had fallen on the track and thus met his fate, but subsequent developments did not sustain this theory.

Suspicion at once pointed Henry Roberts, another negro, who had been intimate with the murdered man, and, as was afterwards discovered, of whom the accused had become

MADLY JEALOUS,

although he had taken every pains to conceal it.

For several months prior to the murder Roberts had been living with a white woman in South Carolina [obscure] miles from King’s mill. About January he carried Ware over to the house of his mistress and introduced him. The man, it seems, conceived a passion for the woman, and determined to possess himself of her at the earliest opportunity.

Roberts visited the woman almost every night, affording no opportunity for his rival to make an appointment with her. About a month after Ware met Roberts’ mistress, he was called away to work in the upper part of Cleveland county.

His rival seized this opportunity to make love to the white charmer, which he did with such success that he was allowed all the privileges of his predecessor.

One night, about a fortnight before the murder, Roberts came to King’s mill unexpectedly. Hearing that his victim was away from home, and doubtless gessing [sic] his whereabouts he went to the woman’s house.

Creeping upon the back porch of the building, he was enabled to see at a glance all that transpired in her chamber, the night was a bright moonlight one, and the hour about 11 o’clock. A glance through the window confirmed Robert’s suspicion as to the

INFIDELITY OF HIS FRIEND AND THE WOMAN.

Ware occupied her bed and she sat near by. He crept down from his post of observation, and returned to his home at King’s mill without allowing anyone to know of the discovery that he had made.

A few days after this occurred, while under the influence of liquor, Roberts became garrulous and related to some of his friends the position in which he had detected his rival, and swore that he intended to be revenged if it took him a life time. No one regarded his drunken threats, and he was allowed to go unmolested.

On the 1st of January the body of Ware was

FOUND ON THE RAILROAD,

as related.

The supposition was that Roberts and Ware had met near that point the night before, and the jealous negro caught his rival and threw him on the railroad track, or, it might have been, tied him down to the rail, as bits of rope were found near the body when it was discovered next day, the ravellings of hemp, showing very clearly that rope had been used for some purpose connected with the murder of the deceased.

Two trains had passed over the body before it was discovered.

Henry Roberts was arrested[,] charged with the crime, committed to jail and tried before the April term of the superior court of Cleveland.

The evidence was entirely circumstantial, but the chain presented itself to the mind of the jury so complete that after a short absence they returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, and the court sentenced Roberts to be hanged on Friday the 24th of May.

Simon Robinson.

EXECUTION OF A NEGRO BRUTE.

PENSACOLA, Fla., May 25. — On the night of the 11th of last March, a negro named Simon Robinson, alias Simon Johnson, alias John Simons, entered the house of Mrs. Amanda Dawson (colored), during her absence, and outraged the person of her child, aged 5 years, using a knife to accomplish his purpose.

The following day he was arrested, and at his examination was identified by the child, which died that night, and Robinson was committed to await his trial at the April term of court, March 13.

Handbills were circulated, calling upon colored people to remember and avenge Amanda Dawson’s child, and asking what white people would do under similar circumstances.

That night the jail was attacked by a crowd, who were warned away by the sheriff, but soon returned with an increased force and demanded Robinson.

Upon the sheriff’s refusal to give him up the mob began firing upon the sheriff, and in the melee, two colored men were killed outright, another mortally wounded, and several others slightly.

At the April term of the circuit Robinson was found guilty of rape and murder, either crime of which is punishable in Florida by death, and sentenced by Judge Maxwell to be hanged.

The Governor fixed the date for May 24th. On yesterday the scaffold in the jail-yard was completed, and at half-past 11 this morning Sheriff Hutchinson led the prisoner onto the scaffold, where he was asked if he had anything to say.

He talked for about twenty minutes, his remarks consisting chiefly of supplications for mercy from heaven, and declarations that he was ready and glad to go home, etc. Upon being asked if he was guilty of the crime, he steadfastly maintained his innocence to the last.

At 12:04 p.m. the black cap was placed over his head, and at 12:08 the trap was sprung and the body of Robinson shot downward, having a fall of seven and a half feet. His neck was instantly broken, and at 12:15 he was pronounced dead.

The gallows was high enough above the jail-yard fence to allow a full view of the proceeding to the crowd, numbering from fifteen hundred to two thousand people present.

Robinson was a negro of no character whatever, his wife having left him about four years ago, after detecting him in an unmentionable crime. Since his execution it is reported he made a full confession last night, immediately after being baptized by his attending clergymen.

On this day..

1935: Tully McQuate, “If I hang, I hang”

Posted on by

On this date in 1935, one of the all-time great names in American gallows history hanged at California’s Folsom Prison for one of the all-time crimes of ingratitude.

Tully McQuate (or Tulley, or Tullie; the name means “peaceful”) entered the annals of criminology via a sack of dismembered human remains discovered in San Diego’s harbor in 1934.

These gory parts turned out upon examination to have formerly constituted a well-to-do 74-year-old widow named Ellen Straw. Mrs. Straw, it transpired, had taken a shine to an Ohio-born drifter thirty years her junior after hiring him to do her yard work, and finally invited said McQuate to live with her.

Period reportage describes her as his “benefactress” but it appears the favors were reciprocal.

“She took a liking to me and I took a liking to her,” he explained in a matter-of-fact confession. (Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1934)

She took me into her home and we got along pretty well for about a year. Then she began to get jealous of me and we began to quarrel.

One night we went down to a mission — neither of us was very religious, but we used to get a kick out of it. We quarreled on the way home. She went to her room and I went to mine. She kept on quarreling with me — I could hear her through the wall.

Finally I got up to get a drink of water. I found a clawhammer that I had been using around the house. I took it and went in and hit her over the head with it. I guess I hit her twice. [The court would find that he hit her six or seven times. -ed.]

I never had any intention of killing her, but when I saw she was dead, I just covered her up and went back to bed.

“Well, if it’s done, it’s done,” I said to myself. I knew it was all up with me then. I knew they would find me some time. But I didn’t care. When I lost my family I had nothing left to care about. [McQuate’s wife had divorced him years before. -ed.]

I left the body there for six days. I never did see her face again. Then I decided I’d better get rid of it, so I took the knife and a saw — I couldn’t get the body into the sack.

McQuate projects a pragmatic matter-of-factness about the situation that’s equal parts disarming and blood-chilling. One can at least say for him that he faced the consequence with the same equanimity.

Well, I guess my time has come. I’ve confessed — told the whole truth — and I’ll plead guilty. There’s no use putting the State to the expense of a trial. I’ve paid taxes myself.

McQuate was as good as his word. Indeed, when the legal proceedings required two days — perhaps anticipating appeal avenues, the District Attorney successfully insisted that McQuate, who had intended to represent himself, must have an attorney in a death penalty case — the murderer griped on the second day, “It’s so foolish. I did it; let ’em sentence me and get it over with. If I hang, I hang.” (Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1934)

On this day..

2014: Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, billionaire

Posted on by

Businessman Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, once the wealthiest man in Iran, was hanged one year ago today for embezzling $2.6 billion.

Khosravi rocketed up the world’s rich lists — Forbes estimated that he would slot in around no. 219 in 2012 — during the late 2000s, when he launched the Aria Investment Development Company. This firm sprouted up from a strapling of 50 million rial (just a couple thousand US dollars) to 20 billion rial in just three years — thanks, as investigations ultimately revealed, to a series of bank loans obtained by means of forged documents that bank managers were tricked or bribed into accepting, then using those loans to purchase state-owned companies like Khuouzestan Steel at sweetheart rates.

According to the Associated Press, “Khosravi’s business empire included more than 35 companies from mineral water production to a football club and meat imports from Brazil.” His fall was a gigantic scandal, generally reckoned the largest financial scam in the history of the Islamic Republic.

The condemnation of a top business magnate on the nuclear “corrupt on earth” charge could hardly fail to raise uncomfortable questions about top government officials. In this case allegations of untoward connections were alleged by to go all the way to then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a political football to discredit the more liberal elements in Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet.

On this day..

1871: Archbishop Georges Darboy, Paris Commune hostage

Posted on by

On this date in 1871, the doomed Paris Commune martyred Archbishop Georges Darboy.

When Darboy (English Wikipedia entry | French) was tapped for the job in 1863, there had already been two recent occupants of the seat of Notre Dame killed violently over the generation preceding.*

A “learned, conscientious, and respected prelate,” Darboy’s own cross to shoulder was the collapse of the Second Empire with France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

That conflict in turn triggered the 1871 working-class revolution in Paris which briefly drove the established government to the old Bourbon haunts at Versailles while maintaining the capital as the Paris Commune.

Darboy declined to follow the many Parisian bourgeoisie who escaped the city in those brief months, but his importance as a visible envoy of the rival order was not so easily refused. The Communards seized Darboy as perhaps the crown jewel among dozens of hostages against the anticipated Versailles counterattack.

Versailles declined to bargain for Darboy or any of the other human shields.** Instead, the city’s cobblestones drank the blood of 20,000 or more in a seven-day urban invasion in late May that has become known as the “bloody week” (semaine sangiante) — and the Commune’s hostages would mingle their blood with the those on the barricades, suffering in their few individual persons the vengeance the Parisian workers longed to visit upon an entire class.

When the Versaillese fixed his eye upon you, you must die; when he searched a house, nothing escaped him. “These are no longer soldiers accomplishing a duty,” said a conservative journal, La France. And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting for blood and pillage. In some places it sufficed to have a watch to be shot. The corpses were searched, and the correspondents of foreign newspapers called those thefts the last perquisition. And the same day M. Thiers had the effrontery to tell the Assembly: “Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration.”

…

At half-past seven a great noise was heard before the prison of La Roquette, where the day before the three hundred hostages, detained until then at Mazas, had been transported. Amidst a crowd of guards, exasperated at the massacres, stood a delegate of the Public Safety Commission, who said, ‘Since they shoot our men, six hostages shall be executed. Who will form the platoon?’ ‘I! I!’ was cried from all sides. One advanced and said, ‘I avenge my father,’ another, ‘I avenge my brother.’ ‘As for me,’ said a guard, ‘they have shot my wife.’ Each one brought forward his right to vengeance. Thirty men were chosen and entered the prison.

The delegate looked over the jail register, pointed out the Archbishop Darboy, the President Bonjean, the banker Jecker, the Jesuits Allard, Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment Jecker was replaced by the Curé Deguerry.

They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stammered out, ‘I am not the enemy of the Commune. I have done all I could. I have written twice to Versailles.’ He recovered a little when he saw death was inevitable. Bonjean could not keep on his legs. ‘Who condemns us?’ said he. ‘The justice of the people.’ ‘0h, this is not the right one,’ replied the president. One of the priests threw himself against the sentry-box and uncovered his breast. They were led further on, and, turning a corner, — met the firing-party. Some men harangued them; the delegate at once ordered silence. The hostages placed themselves against the wall, and the officer of the platoon said to them, ‘It is not we whom you must accuse of your death, but the Versaillese, who are shooting the prisoners.’ He then gave the signal and the guns were fired. The hostages fell back in one line, at an equal distance from each other. Darboy alone remained standing, wounded in the head, one hand raised. A second volley laid him by the side of the others.

The blind justice of revolutions punishes in the first-comers the accumulated crimes of their caste.

–Lissagaray

The six who fell on this occasion would be followed in the Commune’s few remaining days by many more of their fellow hostages — and by countless communards. Theophile Ferre, who authorized the May 24 reprisal execution (and specifically called for Archbishop Darboy’s selection) was himself executed by the victorious bourgeois government that November.

* One of those violent deaths sent an assassin to the guillotine in 1857.

** Specifically, the Commune attempted to exchange Darboy and other hostages for Louis Auguste Blanqui, the great socialist leader whom Versailles had taken prisoner.

On this day..

1872: John Presswood Jr., the last legal hanging in DeKalb County

Posted on by

On this date in 1872, a faltering John Presswood Jr., “nearly 18 years old,” was publicly hanged in Smithville, Tenn., for a still-infamous crime there. He’s the last person to suffer that fate in DeKalb County.


This image (click for a larger version) of the Presswood hanging — in which the gallows practically disappear into the scenery — comes from the Library of Congress.

It was all the way back in late 1870 that Presswood murdered 36-year-old Rachel Fowler Billings, a Civil War widow remarried to a man who unfortunately was away rafting the Caney Fork River. Presswood savagely axed the woman to death in her house, in the presence of her three children — and bashed 11-year-old Inez, the oldest of them, with the axe as well.

Inez survived, but hadn’t seen the attacker. Her three-year-old (!) half-sister provided the identification: “It was Bill Presswood.” While the assailant calmly cleaned himself up with the family water bucket, the traumatized kids comforted each other around the butchered corpse of their mother. (Later, other women of the community would shrink from the neighborly job of tidying up poor Rachel for burial — so horribly had she been mauled.) In the end, the badly injured Inez had to hoof it half a mile to the nearest neighbor to summon help.

An estimated 8,000 people crowded Smithville’s courthouse square for the execution. The sheriff charged with conducting it made sure to give them a pulse-pounding, excruciating (especially for Presswood!) show.

Immediately following the sermon and reading of the confession, Sheriff Henry Blackburn put a hood over Presswood’s head, attached the rope tightly and stood back.

With his hand on the trip bar, he intoned, “Presswood, you have five minutes to Live.”

The crowd surged forward, and then relaxed.

Again Sheriff Blackburn said, “Presswood, you have four minutes to live.”

Beside the lonely figure in the hood, Sheriff Blackburn stood out in sharp contrast. He was a handsome figure, tall, well proportioned and filled with the dignity of his office. He was “High Sheriff” of Dekalb County.

After seemingly hours Sheriff Blackburn announced, “Presswood, you have three minutes to live.”

Occasionally a sob as if a heart were being torn from a body was heard, but there was no outburst from the crowd. The stillness of the May morning was again broken by the commanding voice of Sheriff Blackburn, “Presswood, you have two minutes to live.”

By now several persons in the crowd, no doubt from a pang of conscience, were shifting from one foot to another. Neighbors look guilty at neighbors and the calmest man of all was Sheriff Blackburn as he announced, “Presswood, you have one minute to live.”

Brave members of the crowd gazed intently, wonderingly as the still form with the hood on his head stood torically on the scaffold just a few feet above their heads.

Suddenly Sheriff Blackburn shouted, “Presswood, you die” and sprung the trap. The body jerked at the end of the rope, quivered slightly, and was still.

On this day..

1944: Admiral Inigo Campioni

Posted on by

On this date in 1944, Italy’s fascist rump government shot its former naval commander in Parma.

Inigo Campioni (English Wikipedia page | Italian) was both a Senator and the Admiral in charge of Italy’s main battle fleet when war came in 1940.

Knocked for overcaution during a few engagements with the British, he was relieved of his leading command position by the end of that year.

Come September 1943, he was at the island of Rhodes when Italy agreed to an armistice with the Allies. This was actually quite an unlucky spot to be, since the Germans, anticipating this development, had prepared a lightning Dodecanese Campaign to seize Italy’s positions in the Greek islands.

Many Italians resisted the German incursion, and suffered some of the war’s more infamous massacres for their trouble.

Campioni, who likewise recognized the government that signed the armistice, was captured within three days.

Unlike those recalcitrant Italians who met a summary fate, the admiral’s stature made him worth the trouble of trying to persuade. He was shipped first to a camp in Poland then to a prison in the northern Italian fascist statelet still headed by his former boss, Mussolini.

Campioni just kept refusing to recognize this Italian Social Republic: even to the end, he had a reprieve from shooting on offer for the price of an expedient word.

For never speaking that word, and instead suffering the fusillade with fellow-admiral Luigi Mascherpa, Admiral Campioni has been well-honored in posterity.

On this day..

2007: Christopher Newton

Posted on by

After Christopher Newton’s death in Lucasville, Ohio by lethal injection on this day in 2007, his attorney read a prepared last statement that apologized for the murder of a fellow inmate: “If I could take it back, I would.”

But the evidence of the “bizarre” execution says Newton was right where he wanted to be.

From the time the obese career criminal (pdf) garroted his cellmate in 2001,* he cooperated with investigators only to the extent that cooperation would grease the wheels of that so-called machinery of death. The entire thing was engineered to get Newton his last parole.

It still took him over five years to land on a gurney, but if you think that’s inefficient, get a load of the execution itself.

For going on two hours, the injection team poked and prodded at Newton’s veins in vain, trying to squeeze a lethal shunt into its gargantuan subject.

“We have told the team to take their time,” read a sign that a prison spokesperson held up in the hush-hush viewing chamber an hour into this discomfiting procedure. “His size is creating a problem.”

Minutes later, the 19-stone condemned man got a bathroom break during his own execution.

So far as anyone could see, the delay was anything but agony for Newton, who was generally observed smiling, laughing, and chatting it up with the prison personnel who were struggling to kill him. Finally, they managed to do it — an achievement which Ohio has latterly demonstrated is by no means a given.

* And allegedly drank some of Jason Brewer’s blood to boot, though this claim proceeding from a man who was intentionally pursuing a death sentence merits skepticism.

On this day..