History for Kossacks: The Chief Justice who was hanged for abuse of power

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Friday February 19, 2010 · 10:00 AM PST

2010/02/19 · 10:00

(Cross-posted from ExecutedToday.com.)

On this date in 1388, England's former Chief Justice was executed for his executive-friendly jurisprudence.

The ambitious Robert Tresilian (or Tresillian) had shimmied his way up the 14th century legal ranks for his dutiful service to the monarch, including presiding over a "bloody assize" after Wat Tyler's revolt.

Despite stringing up 500 rebels, Tresilian couldn't have been too upset about the disturbance: it also killed off the sitting Chief Justice and opened the seat for a man of Tresilian's talents and loyalty.

A few years later, Richard would require of this position a legal opinion vindicating his personal authority as against the council his rivals had foisted upon him. Tresilian duly produced a writ affirming the unitary executive authority.

executedtoday

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Tuesday November 17, 2009 · 7:31 AM PST

2009/11/17 · 07:31

Cross-posted from ExecutedToday.com.

On this date in 1909, the execution of two American soldiers of fortune set in motion a century of American strife with Nicaragua.

executedtoday

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Sunday October 11, 2009 · 8:13 PM PDT

2009/10/11 · 20:13

Cross-posted from ExecutedToday.com - hit the link to the original for a sketch from a contemporaneous crime magazine.

On this date in 1870, Margaret Waters became the first woman in England to hang for baby-farming.

Waters was condemned for murdering an infant she had taken in as a contractual temporary adoption; there is the matter in the dry language of the law.

But Waters' import -- and in fact, since press outrage that her ward's death had initially been ruled only manslaughter by the coroner, the extremity of her legal straits as well -- derived from her milestone symbolism in a burgeoning Victorian-era moral panic.

executedtoday

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Sunday November 30, 2008 · 6:38 AM PST

2008/11/30 · 06:38

Cross-posted from ExecutedToday.com

On this date in 1824, the last Englishman to hang for forgery met his fate at Newgate prison.

In a celebrated affair of the time, Fauntleroy was found to have inherited from his father a partnership in the foundering London bank Marsh, Sibbald & Co.

Desperate to keep the concern alive by maintaining a front of normalcy, Fauntleroy serviced its obligations by forging powers of attorney authorizing him to sell stock that he was supposed to merely be holding for investors.

executedtoday

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Sunday October 12, 2008 · 9:18 AM PDT

2008/10/12 · 09:18

Early this morning in 1915, the German military occupying Belgium shot aid worker Edith Cavell at Brussels for aiding the British war effort.

The matronly nurse had been condemned only the day before by a German military court for helping Allied soldiers escape from behind German lines -- charges Cavell readily admitted. The British chaplain who attended her the night before her death reported her saying (not actually her last words, but recalled as her parting sentiment, as it were):

But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward any one.

executedtoday

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Wednesday August 06, 2008 · 9:03 AM PDT

2008/08/06 · 09:03

August 6, 1945 was the horrible dawn of the atomic age at Hiroshima.

It's also the less well-known debut of an equally iconic, equally American killing technology: the electric chair, which claimed its first victim on August 6, 1890 in New York's Auburn Prison.

This weird hybrid of penal reformism, naive techno-optimism and cutthroat corporate competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse made a nauseating botch of its maiden usage upon the person of otherwise obscure wife-murderer William Kemmler.

Cross-posted from Executed Today

executedtoday

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Thursday February 28, 2008 · 10:09 AM PST

2008/02/28 · 10:09

(Guest-posted to Executed Today by David Elliot of Abolish the Death Penalty)

Six years ago today the state of Texas executed an FBI agent, a state district judge, the president of Kenya and a war hero who commanded a nuclear-powered submarine during the Civil War. More aptly put, Texas executed a seriously mental ill inmate named Monty Allen Delk who, at varying times, believed he was all of these things.

executedtoday

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Sunday February 03, 2008 · 6:51 AM PST

2008/02/03 · 06:51

(Cross-posted from Executed Today.)

Ten years ago today, born-again murderess Karla Faye Tucker died by lethal injection in Texas -- her reprieve refused by politically ambitious Governor George W. Bush.

At the bottom, Tucker's case was a simple one: on a drug-fueled jag at age 23, she'd committed two grisly axe murders in the course of a robbery.* By the time her appeals ran out and her case reached the executive clemency stage, she'd become an outspoken born-again Christian and was asking for mercy.

She was far from the first prisoner to have undergone that conversion.

executedtoday

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Wednesday January 30, 2008 · 8:04 AM PST

2008/01/30 · 08:04

Cross-posted from Executed Today.

On this date in 1649, the struggle between parliament and crown cost the Stuart monarch Charles I his head.

Charles' political clumsiness and unreconstructed authoritarianism had seen the realm whose unitary sovereignty he insisted upon blunder from disaster to disaster: into bankruptcy, military defeat and religious conflict. (Sound like anyone you know?)

executedtoday

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Thursday January 24, 2008 · 8:16 AM PST

2008/01/24 · 08:16

(Cross-posted from Executed Today)

Four presidential cycles ago today, Hillary's husband dropped a syringe plunger in the old Democratic party.

Poll

15 votes Show Results

If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?

15 votes Vote Now!

If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?

No, I don't, Bernard. And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life.

6 votes

I'd like to hear from Vice President Bush, if Barbara Bush were raped and murdered by a man with the mental capacity of an eggplant, would he favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?

1 vote

Dukakis kill! Smash with tank!

4 votes

Christ. Will you be publicly fantasizing about sex crimes all night, Bernard?

4 votes

Yes, if a situation arose where I could derive some apparent personal benefit, I would unhesitatingly reverse my longstanding opposition to poor public policy. Now ask me what the Dukakis personal tax rate should be.

0 votes

Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Survived a Mock Execution This Date in 1849

executedtoday

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Saturday December 22, 2007 · 10:10 AM PST

2007/12/22 · 10:10

Guest post by Sonechka, cross-posted from Executed Today

"Brother, I am not dejected or crestfallen. Life, life is everywhere, life is in us ourselves, not outside. Near me will be people, and to be a person among persons and stay him forever, to not be cast down or despondent no matter what the misfortunes are – therein lies life, therein lies its purpose. I realized that. This idea entered my flesh and blood. Yes! It’s true! The head that created and got accustomed to the higher demands of the spirit, that head is cut off from my shoulders. What’s left are the memories and images created and not reified by me. They will ulcerate me, indeed! What I have left is my heart and the same flesh and blood, which can love, suffer, pity, and remember, and this is life, after all ..." (quote -- in Russian; the translation is mine)

executedtoday

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Friday December 14, 2007 · 5:00 AM PST

2007/12/14 · 05:00

On or about this date in 1974, Howard Dean's brother, Charles, and his Australian friend Neal Sharman are believed to have been executed in Laos by the Pathet Lao guerrillas.

Coincidentally, it was also at about this point of the 2003-04 presidential election cycle that Howard Dean, then the frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination, learned through DNA analysis that remains recovered in Laos were indeed those of his brother. He is perhaps the most prominent death penalty survivor in the United States.

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History for Kossacks: The Chief Justice who was hanged for abuse of power

Nov. 17, 1909: Nicaragua executes American unlawful combatants

October 11, 1870: Poverty, slut-shaming, medical profiteering and the execution of Margaret Waters

Strangled on his debt: Henry Fauntleroy

Executed this date in 1915: Edith Cavell, "patriotism is not enough"

As American as the A-bomb: Debut of the Electric Chair

Mental illness in death penalty appeals: the Monty Allen Delk case

Ten years ago today: Karla Faye Tucker dies for Governor Bush

359 years ago today: an incompetent unitary executive beheaded

Remembering Ricky Ray Rector

Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Survived a Mock Execution This Date in 1849

Remembering Charles Dean