Last Public Hanging

Newgate Gaol in London

The last man to be publicly hanged in Great Britain was 29 year old Michael Barrett, who was a member of the Fenians (the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood.) His crime? The Clerkenwell bombing in 1867 which killed 12 people and severely wounded many more.

Barret delivered a passionate speech in court before sentence was passed:

"I am far from denying, nor will the force of circumstances compel me to deny my love of my native land. I love my country and if it is murderous to love Ireland dearer than I love my life, then it is true, I am a murderer. If my life were ten times dearer than it is and if I could by any means, redress the wrongs of that persecuted land by the sacrifice of my life, I would willingly and gladly do so."

On 26th May, 1868 in front of thousands who were jeering and singing "Rule Britannia", Michael Barrett was hanged outside the walls of Newgate Prison. The hangman was William Calcraft.

Execution @ Tyburn

14 Days in May

Fourteen Days in May is a documentary directed by Paul Hamann. The program recounts the final days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an American prisoner convicted of rape and murder. Johnson protested his innocence and claimed that his confession had been made under duress. He was executed in Mississippi's gas chamber on May 20, 1987.

China Rocks

This was an article I wrote in 2009, it could be wriiten today for that woman in Bali.

China they have a saying regarding the death penalty - kill the chicken to scare off the monkeys - or words to that effect, and I am in total agreement. If you are greedy (or stupid) enough to attempt to smuggle drugs into China then you must accept the fate that awaits if you are caught: execution often by firing squad.
Todays execution of EU national, Akmal Shaikh, has stirred up the issue once again, with Britain condemning China and the tabloids screaming 'Mentally Ill Man Executed!' The shock! The horror! (The bile inducing support for criminals). What exactly are the UK angry at? China carrying out THEIR punishment for THEIR laws? I find it arrogant in the extreme that Britain thinks it can tell another country they shouldn't execute a criminal because he/she is British, especially a country with zero tolerance toward criminal behaviour as opposed to here in the UK where we seem to go out of our way to make criminals as comfortable as possible.
We have people who do not understand why anyone would risk smuggling drugs in such places as China and trot out mental health issues as some kind of excuse for their transgressions. Allow me to help here: there are, believe it or not, bad and greedy people in this world, people with clear minds (before they recieve a death sentence) who are more than willing to attempt to make easy money on the smuggling circuit just like there are burglars who continue to steal knowing they could end up in one of our plush prisons.
Shaikh tried his chances, lost and is in his grave because of it. Britain's lily livered can huff and puff all they want but the smuggler is dead and good riddance to him. And no, this execution won't deter another criminal to try his hand at smuggling because its plain to anyone that the death penalty isn't about deterence - its a punishment. However we'll chalk it up as a bonus if somebody is indeed put off by these events.
There should be no sympathy directed at Shaikh, nor should China be shunned for following their laws. They ought to be applauded and I only wish we treated our criminals with the same strict hand. (I doubt they have feral teenage yobs terrorizing pensioners and swigging cider on street corners).
Drugs cause an infinite amount of misery, which rots communities. One less smuggler is a reason to be championed.
'Oh but this poor man was mentally ill!' Cry the cotton hearts. Yes dears, they all try that stroke on death row, shame on you for believing it. If Shaikh had gotten away with this he would have been taking his mental illness all the way to the bank. Think about that.

Redemption

I don't believe in hell. Once the condemned inmate is dead he/she has paid the price. Their slate is clean as it weere. (Some Wardens and executioners thought this too.) There is no reason in executing them otherwise if theres no redemption. If theyre still guilty in death one might as well just lock them up for life (and throw away the key. We don't make the rule in the Afterlife and I personally believe that whoever does will forgive sinners, even those guilty of the worst sins.
I am not condoning rape or murder (I would execute all offenders) but there are other crimes equal to these such as ignorance and neglect.

Merry Executionmas

The Festive Holidays are generally a quiet time for places of execution but a finl jig on the gallows (or whatever) is not unheard of on or around Christmas and history shows us that death sentences have indeed been carried out while in most homes goose and wine is on the table. Afterall why should the wheels of Justice stop?
And here Execution island takes a look at some folk who have been opening caskets rather than gifts.

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romanian Communist politician) and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad on Christmads Day in 1989.

"On Christmas Day, 25 December, the two were tried in a brief show trial and sentenced to death by a military court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgovişte.
A video of the trial shows that, after sentencing, they had their hands tied behind their backs and were led outside the building to be killed.

The Ceaușescus were killed by a firing squad consisting of elite paratroop regiment soldiers. The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in position against a wall. The firing happened too soon for the film crew covering the events to record."



In Great Britain a report in The Times dated Tuesday 31st July 1923 says that John William Eastwood (39) was charged with the murder of John Joseph Clark (48).
The hanging of John 'Jack' Eastwood on 28th of December 1923, was the last execution that was conducted by John Ellis.
The prison staff told reporters that Eastwood had to be "assisted to the scaffold." After the execution, Jack would have been buried within the confines of Armley Gaol.

A Cruel Necessity

Oliver Cromwell was the man who was the main mover behind the execution of Charles I as he believed that Charles would never change his ways and that he would continue to be a source of trouble until he died. Cromwell's signature is one of the easiest to make out on the death warrant of Charles - it is third on the list of signatures. It is said that a shadowy man was seen by guards who were guarding the dead body of Charles. He was heard to mutter "Twas a cruel necessity, twas a cruel necessity." Was this Cromwell? We shall never know.



@ Steven Francis 2011

Texas

"No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which -- when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required.

But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed."

Texas Governor Rick Perry

Walls Unit

Old Walls Unit

7:10p The lethal drugs took effect on George Rivas very quickly. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m., 10 minutes after the injection began.

7:09p We've now received the full text of George Rivas' final statement:

First of all, for the Aubrey Hawkins family, I do apologize for everything that happened. Not because I am here, but for closure in your hearts. I really believe you deserve that.

To my wife, Cheri. I am so grateful you’re in my life. I love you so dearly.

Thank you to my sister and dear friend, Katherine Cox, my son and my family. Friends and family, I love you so dearly.

To my friends, all the guys on the row, you have my courtesy and respect.

Thank you to the people involved and the courtesy of the officers. I am grateful for everything in my life. To my wife, take care of yourself, I will be waiting for you. I love you, God bless.

I am ready to go.

7:07p Prior to his execution George Rivas told his new wife he loved her. "I am grateful for everything in my life. I love you. God bless. I am ready to go." Rivas was calm, smiling and appeared to be at peace with what was to follow.

6:31p Before being put to death, George Rivas said: "For Aubrey Hawkins' family, I apologized for everything that happened ... not because I'm here, but for closure in your hearts. I really believe you deserve that.

6:26p Texas 7 gang leader George Rivas was executed by lethal injection at 6:22 p.m. for the murder of Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins.

5:59p George Rivas will be strapped to a gurney, arms extended, and an IV for the lethal injection will be inserted in both arms. Once He's strapped down, the warden will call for witnesses to enter the two observation rooms.

5:58p Once witnesses are in place, guards will ask George Rivas if he wants to make a final statement. He said he did.

5:48p Guards move George Rivas from his holding cell, 15 feet to the execution chamber. The lethal injection procedure is scheduled to begin a few minutes after six o'clock.

5:22p One of George Rivas' four witnesses did not appear for his execution. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins will attend instead.

5:03p Three drugs are used in the lethal injection cocktail. That used to cost about $86, but the price has recently skyrocketed to more than $1,300 because the state has been forced to resort to a more expensive substitute for one of the drugs being used.

5:01p "I met with him a few minutes ago along with the warden and the chaplain, and Rivas stated that he's... all these years he's made it clear that he's ready to go," said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "He did say that he was going to make a last statement." Rivas is said to have made several personal calls from a phone provided by the prison, He asked five friends to witness his lethal injection.

4:50p More than 15 Irving police officers are standing outside the Walls Unit where George Rivas will soon be executed for killing Irving Officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve 2000.

4:42p The widow of Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins, who was killed by George Rivas, will not attend the execution. She told News 8 that she felt no closure after being present at the last execution of a Texas 7 gang member in 2009.

4:40p George Rivas was served barbequeue chicken for his final meal, just like the other inmates at the Walls Unit.

4:30p George Rivas' appeals have all been denied. Clemency is denied. The state says attorneys for the convicted killer do not plan a last-minute challenge to the scheduled 6 o'clock execution.

3:49p Texas no longer offers a special "last meal" to condemned inmates. At 4 o'clock, George Rivas will get the same meal the rest of the unit gets today.

2:48p WFAA photojournalist Taylor Lumsden is following five Irving Police Department vehicles en route to Huntsville to witness the execution of George Rivas.

12:47p Arriving at the Walls Unit, George Rivas goes to a holding cell 15 feet away from the death chamber. He is alone and unrestrained and can use a phone.

12:45p George Rivas will be fingerprinted and given a new white uniform upon arriving at the Walls unit following lunch for his scheduled 6 o'clock execution.

11:50a Guards will soon move George Rivas from Death Row about 40 miles to the Walls Unit for a scheduled 6 p.m. execution.

11:45a George Rivas spent this morning meeting with friends behind glass at Texas Death Row.

Execution of Pietro Caruso

Execution of Pietro Caruso - Italian chief of fascist police. Distressing images. Pietro Caruso was the co-organiser of the massacre in Fosse Ardeatine in 1944. This clip shows brief bits from his trial followed by his grisly execution by a firing squad in some unknown location in Italy.

Bloodthirsty

Just take a bit off the top thanks.


There is a belief amongst certain sections of the Anti death penalty crowd that Pro death supporters are 'bloodthirsty'. They seem to think all of us are counting down to every execution, a glint in our eyes and rubbing our hands together in some type of sadaistic anticipation for the death to come. Indeed some believe all Pros are sitting around death penalty internet websites, salivating at different methods of execution and getting some kind of weird sexual thrills from them.
And this simply is not true. Its a myth, a cheap shot in order to make Pros look like rabid sickos and barbarians. Yes you get the "Fry Circus" mob standing outside prisons with placards saying all manner of crazy stuff but Antis do this too. There are crazies on both sides, and you only have to visit the forums online dedicated to the death penalty to see it. (The 'death row groupie' sites are particularly disturbing.)
By and large though, Pro death supporters are very normal and show no hint of this silly 'bloodlust'. I know, im one of them! Truth is, whenever an execution occurs it barely registers on my 'Thrill 'O Meter', unable to raise a smile let alone an erection. All I feel is glad that the suitable (in my opinion) punishment was handed out and happy the murdered victims family got what they wanted (if they wanted it, I realise some families don't.) Thats it, not a cheer or swinging dick in sight.
If I was truly bloodthirsty and the type to get cheap thrills from death, there are many other avenues to quench my thirst for vein claret and they would be much more satisfying than hanging around execution sites waiting for some mope to receive his/her lethal jab. Hell that right there is why there can be hardly any lust for blood ~ lethal injection. Laughs Out Loud. Death by sleeping, yeah sure, that is really going to get someone in a fit and frenzy. If we were still breaking people on the wheel or stuffing them in brazen bulls then these idiot antis (not the sensible ones) might have a point but we don't so there.
If Pros wanted to get kicks out of things dying we would go out and shoot a few kittens or stomp on sparrows or whatever. Guess what? We don't, because by and large pro death penalty supporters are not sick.
And you will not find any irony with me posting this on a blog titled "Execution Island". This entire place was created as a pi$$ take, a caricature if you will of how some misguided souls think we are.

Cardboard Gurney

Look at the photographs below. Somebody has actually taken the time out to actually make cardboard versions of a gurney! A harmless replica of the not so harmless gurney those about to recieve a lethal injection get to lay on in their final moments on earth. Do you know what this means dear reader? It means somewhere out there on the vast plant earth is a being just like me! Who evidently has the same morbid bundle of nerves and blanket of black making up their being. The ghoul is not alone! Praise be shroud of death! Even shadow bees who feed on grave wax are not alone! This is indeed a comforting revelation.


What a cooler Blue Peter would have made us build in our youth.

Death On Trial

Last Traitor Hung, Drawn, Quartered

On this day, the 24th August 1772, the last hanged, drawn and quartered method of execution took plavce. The unfortunate guy was the Scottish spy David Tyrie.
At his trial in Winchester, Tyrie was found to have been passing secrets to the French. The American War of Independence was still being fought, British forces thus stretched and these islands (British) more vulnerable to foreign attack than was comfortable. It was said that the information relayed by Tyrie was provided by senior figures in the government, so perhaps his horrific death was a way of discouraging such activity without the embarrassment of a trial featuring great names.
Tyrie’s execution was carried out by the shore in Portsmouth. Hanged for 22 minutes so probably already dead he was then beheaded (which we can take it ensured he was). His heart was cut out and symbolically burned in front of him, he was emasculated, cut into quarters and finally buried in the pebbly shore. For Tyrie, however, the indignity was not yet complete: sailors at the event immediately exhumed the four parts of his butchered body and hacked them into tiny pieces for distribution as very grim souvenirs.

Rise of Gallows

"I was maybe thinking maybe people might take a second and think twice about people killing people."

The second I took told me I was right. When I see a murderer thats all I can see in his/her background is a gallows. It appears in a shadow behind the killer kinda like the crucifix above the deers head on a bottle of Jagermeister. But alas the message is differnet to me.
Like Marley in Dickens' book, the gallows are forged by the persons sins. Break that most dear of trusts, smash that most precious of things (life) and the only thing left is for you to perish for your diabolically selfish crime. Be as dust, be still and gone.

Witnessed Two Executions

I have been an official witness for two executions in my State. One was a lethal injection and the second was the Electric Chair. What I can say is that it is a very sterilized, medical type procedure. I do not see how the executed person felt any type of physical pain other than the needle going in on the LI. The electrocution, according to all of my research is painless if done correctly. Obviously this is based on simple physics and what the human body can/cannot handle. The research I perused basically described it as too much juice through a circuit simply blows the fuse; end of discussion.
After having witnessed two, I can say that I am glad that I did. If you support something, you should be willing to see it through to the end, especially for me as the DP is the ultimate penalty in my field. It is so sterilized, however, so as to be boring and mundane although to watch the precision and efficiency by which the execution team performs is something to appreciate.
Would I do it again? Perhaps. I would like to witness a firing squad and the other methods used so that I could see all of them, but I seriously doubt that that will happen. I do believe though that the only sure pain that the subject feels is the severe anxiety/ apprehension adn sheer terror related to the fact that they know EXACTLY what is transpiring and the when and where of their demise. I rest peacefully in the fact that that has to be something horrible and frightening in their final living days as they get closer and closer to their date and hour.
Lethal injection is a fairly sterile, clinical-like procedure and the only pain the inmate really feels is the poke of the IV needles going into each arm. The biggest thing I suppose is the waiting. The inmate knows that he or she's going to buy the farm on that table in a matter of a few minutes and the anticipation of death has got to be overwhelming for not only the inmate, but the staff that is in the room and perhaps even for the witnesses that have gathered.
Wnen I say the electrocution was pretty sterile, I meant it wasn't pasty white and light blue with the gurney and such, but it was very controlled and almost clinical in its application. The condemned was also strapped into the chair so tightly that there was little motion otehr than an upward lurching, but nothing like that has been displayed by Hollywood like The Green Mile or anything like that. There was some residual smoke from the leg strap and a blister appeared where it was attached, but overall, it was very non-climatic, just like lethal injection.

Hard Times of Old

On or about this day in 1629, one John Dean, described in court documents as “an infant between eight and nine years,” was hanged in Abingdon, England for setting fire to two barns in the nearby town of Windsor.

This juvenile felon was indicted, arraigned and found guilty all on the same day, February 23, “and was hanged accordingly.” The actual date of his execution is not known, but it can’t have been long afterward because the wheels of British justice ground very quickly in those days.
The age of criminal responsibility in Britain at the time was seven years old. (It was later raised to eight, and in 1963 to ten, where it remains; there have been calls to raise it again.) Accordingly, anyone seven years or older could be charged with a crime and face the same penalties as someone seventeen or forty-seven — including the death sentence.

But do remember that this does not mean that vast numbers of children were executed, quite the contrary. As records show, death sentences were certainly routinely passed on 7 -13 year olds but equally routinely commuted. Girls were only typically hanged for the most serious crimes whereas teenage boys were executed for a wide range of felonies.

The youngest person to have been hanged in Britain was in 1708 of a boy called Michael Hammond aged 7, hanged in King's Lynn at the South Gate along side his sister Ann aged 11.

Bundy's Last Interview

On the eve of his execution, he talked of suicide. "He did not want to give the state the satisfaction of watching him die," Hagmaier said. Ted Bundy died in the Raiford electric chair at 7:16 a.m. Eastern time on January 24, 1989. Several hundred celebrants sang, danced, and set off fireworks in a pasture across the street from the prison as the execution was carried out,[255][256] then cheered loudly as the white hearse bearing Bundy's body departed the prison. His remains were cremated in Gainesville and the ashes scattered at an undisclosed location in the Cascade Range of Washington State.

Execution Of A General

The Execution of a German General

He served as Chief of Staff of the 7th Army. Subsequently, he commanded the 57th Infantry Division (1941-1942), the 163rd Infantry Division (1942) and the 42nd Army Corps (1943-1944). He was appointed to command the 75th Army Corps in January 1944.

Execution Of Spies



This harrowing clip is from the British Pathe archives. There were no details about location or dates attached to the original reel. It does mention that the firing squad is the American Military Police. We assume these events happened during World War II.

Guns For Hire