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Thread: Notable Federal Executions

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Notable Federal Executions

    Men Executed at Fort Smith: 1873 to 1896


    Execution of Crawford Goldsby, alias Cherokee Bill, March 17, 1896

    From 1873 until 1896, the federal court conducted executions on the grounds of the courthouse. The gallows scaffold was located against the southeast corner of the wall that surrounded the old fort.

    From 1873 through 1896, eighty-six men were executed on the gallows at Fort Smith. All the men executed were convicted of rape or murder. After the Civil War, there was a mandatory federal death sentence in cases of rape or murder.

    Of the eighty-six men executed here, seventy-nine were sentenced to death by Judge Parker. During Judge Parker's twenty-one year tenure, a total of 160 death sentences were handed down. Of that number, 43 were commuted to life in prison or lesser terms; 2 were pardoned by the President; 31 had appeals that resulted in acquittals or convictions overturned; 2 were granted new trials and discharged; 1 was shot and killed while attempting to escape; and 2 died in jail while awaiting execution.

    Click on each date to learn more about the execution that occurred on that day.

    August 15, 1873
    John Childers
    October 10, 1873
    Tunagee, alias Tuni
    Young Wolf
    April 3, 1874
    John Billy
    Isaac Filmore
    John Pointer

    January 15, 1875
    McClish Impson



    Isaac Charles Parker, who presided as federal judge over Arkansas’s Western District; circa 1875. He was popularly dubbed the “hanging judge” because of the seventy-nine executions carried out during his tenure.
    Courtesy of the Arkansas History Commission




    September 3, 1875
    First execution under the tenure of Judge Isaac Parker
    Edmund Campbell
    Daniel Evans
    Samuel Fooy
    Smoker Mankiller
    James Moore
    William Whittington

    April 21, 1876
    Gibson Ishtanubbee
    William Leach
    Orpheus McGee
    Isham Seeley
    Aaron Wilson

    September 8, 1876
    Samuel Peters
    Osey Sanders
    John Valley
    Sinker Wilson

    December 20, 1878
    James Diggs
    John Postoak

    August 29, 1879
    William Elliot Wiley, alias Colorado Bill
    Dr. Henri Stewart

    September 9, 1881
    William Brown
    Abler Manley
    Amos Manley
    Patrick McGowen
    George W. Padgett

    June 30, 1882
    Edward Fulsom
    April 13, 1883
    Robert Massey

    June 29, 1883
    William Finch
    Martin Joseph
    Te-o-lit-se

    July 11, 1884
    John Davis
    Thomas Thompson
    Jack Womankiller

    April 17, 1885
    William Phillips

    June 26, 1885
    James Arcine
    William Parchmeal

    April 23, 1886
    Joseph Jackson
    James Wasson

    July 23, 1886
    Calvin James
    Lincoln Sprole

    August 6, 1886
    Kitt Ross

    January 14, 1887
    John T. Echols
    James Lamb
    Albert O'Dell
    John Stephens

    April 8, 1887
    Patrick McCarty

    October 7, 1887
    Seaborn Kalijah, alias Seaborn Green
    Silas Hampton

    April 27, 1888
    Jackson Crow
    Owen Hill
    George Moss

    July 6, 1888
    Gus Bogles

    January 25, 1889
    Richard Smith

    April 19, 1889
    Malachi Allen
    James Mills

    August 30, 1889
    Jack Spaniard
    William Walker

    January 16, 1890
    Harris Austin
    John Billy
    Jimmon Burris
    Sam Goin
    Jefferson Jones
    Thomas Willis

    January 30, 1890
    George Tobler

    July 9, 1890
    John Stansberry

    June 30, 1891
    Boudinot Crumpton, alias Bood Burris

    April 27, 1892
    Sheppard Busby

    June 28, 1892
    John Thornton

    July 25, 1894
    Lewis Holder

    September 20, 1894
    John Pointer

    March 17, 1896
    Crawford Goldsby, alias Cherokee Bill

    April 30, 1896
    Webber Isaacs
    George Pierce
    John Pierce

    July 1, 1896
    Rufus Buck
    Lewis Davis
    Lucky Davis
    Maoma July
    Sam Sampson

    July 30, 1896
    George Wilson, alias James Casherago





    http://www.nps.gov/fosm/historycultu...73-to-1896.htm


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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Mary Surratt: the first woman executed by the US



    Mary Surratt, convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. She was the first woman executed by the United States government.


    On July 7 1865, Mary Surratt began the long walk through the house that had been her prison for more than two months. Although the day was oppressively hot she wore the same clothing she’d worn throughout her trial, a long-sleeved black dress that fell to the top of her high black shoes. Two guards supported her elbows as she struggled to remain upright against the sedative drugs she had mercifully been given. They were a small comfort, but she was grateful.

    They reached the door leading to the courtyard and the guards gripped her arms tighter as if afraid she would slip from their grasp to fall or run. Mary did neither. Her dark eyes firmly fixed to the toes of her shoes, she slowly descended the wooden steps to the ground, stumbling only slightly at the change in slope. Shadows of the spectators rolled over her shoes as she walked by and she wondered briefly how many belonged to familiar forms. She didn’t look up to search out the faces of casual acquaintances, people who had once tipped their hats or smiled at her, she knew there would be no solicitous nods now.

    Mary hesitated only slightly when she reached the bottom step to the gallows. The terror was still only a low rumble in her chest as the reality of her situation had yet to completely slip past the drugs. She knew if she continued to watch her shoes, if she refused to set her eyes on the looped and knotted rope, she could keep the fear from crawling into her throat and cutting off her breath. The noose would do that soon enough.


    Newspaper drawing of Surratt in the death cell with her priest in July 1865.

    The walk from her room/cell to the gallows had seemed to Mary endlessly brief. Now, standing on the platform, her hands and feet bound, Mary finally knew beyond doubt that she had only moments left to live. She swayed slightly as a small breeze brushed her face in a last caress. Above the din of her heart, she listened to the murmuring of the crowd and the intonations of the preacher. A small beetle crawled over the tip of her shoe and she focused on the progress of the tiny body with such intensity that at the sound of a voice asking if she had any last words, she started and gasped. Tears slipped down her pale cheeks and she whispered softly, “Please don’t let me fall.” *

    A black hood was placed over her head and Mary thought she could smell the lingering fear of those condemned before her. A shudder ran through her as the rope was tightened around her neck, the hangman making certain that the knot was securely under her left ear so death would be quick. Lastly, another rope was wrapped around her dress at the calves to maintain modesty.

    At a signal from the general, the executioner pulled the lever and sent Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt into history as the first woman to be hanged by the United States government.


    Execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt on July 7, 1865 at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Digitally restored.

    She was 42 years old.

    Mary Elizabeth Jenkins was born in Waterloo, Maryland in the spring of 1823. At the age of twelve Mary’s mother chose to give her daughter a better education than most of the farm girls in her day received. To accomplish this, Mary was taken across the Potomac River to Alexandria, Virginia and enrolled in a school operated by St Mary’s Catholic Church. There, she converted to Catholicism and chose Eugenia** as her confirmation name, after St Eugenia whose feast day falls on Christmas.

    In 1840 at the tender age of 17, Mary was married to 28 year old John Harrison Surratt. 3 children arrived in quick succession: Isaac, Elizabeth, & John Jr. The family of 5 lived on a farm near Oxon Hill, Maryland until the early 1850’s.

    In 1852, John Surratt purchased and began to develop 287 acres of farmland in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He built a two-story house that became - in addition to the family home - a tavern, polling place, and post office. The small local community, now Clinton, was then known as Surrattsville. During the Civil War the Surratt House served as part of the Confederate underground network.

    The Surratt family lived in Surrattsville for ten years until the sudden death of John Sr. in 1862. Mary struggled valiantly to survive the mountain of debts left her by her husband, but the war made it virtually impossible to collect on debts owed to the tavern. Finally, in 1864, Mary was forced to rent the Surratt house to ex-policeman, John Lloyd. (His testimony during her trial would ensure her conviction.) She and her daughter, Anne, now twenty, moved into a townhouse the family owned on 541 H Street in Washington City. There she began a respectable boardinghouse business and met the man who would ultimately lead to her inglorious place in history – John Wilkes Booth.

    Mary Surratt’s son, John Harrison Surratt Jr., continuing the Confederate sympathies of his father, began allowing southern sympathizers to use the boardinghouse for surreptitious meetings. The leader of this group of insurgents was a popular theatre actor named John Wilkes Booth.

    It is not clear if Mary knew of Booth’s involvement in the assassination plot of President Lincoln or if she was merely running errands for a man with whom she had become infatuated. According to John Lloyd - the man renting her tavern in Surrattsville - she did deliver messages to him on two separate occasions from Booth. The first communication, on April 11, 1865, was to relay that Booth wanted Lloyd to have the “shooting irons” ready and again on April 14, the day of Lincoln’s assassination, Mary told Lloyd to have the escape gear prepared.

    Lewis Paine, one of the three conspirators executed along with Mary, insisted throughout the trial on her innocence. Although the jury found her guilty of conspiracy and voted for the death penalty, they recommended life in prison in deference to her “sex and age”. President Andrew Johnson refused to consider a plea for mercy declaring that Mrs. Surratt had “…supplied the nest…” for the conspirators.

    To this day the consensus of many people is that the government committed a judicial murder by hanging Mary Surratt.

  3. #3
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    LINCOLN CASE COMES TO TRIAL AFTER 146 YEARS

    CHICAGO – On July 7, 1865 a woman was among four people executed for conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Now, 146 years later, she will finally get a new trial – two of them, in fact – as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission team up to re-try the case of Mary Surratt.

    The re-trial of Mary Surratt featuring well-known Illinois attorneys and a judge will be held Friday, September 23 at 5 p.m. in the Pritzker Auditorium at the Harold Washington Library, 400 South State Street in Chicago; and Monday, October 3 at 5:30 p.m. in the Union Theater at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, 212 N. Sixth Street in Springfield. Tickets are priced at $25 each and will be available starting August 1, and seating will be very limited. Tickets for the Chicago dramatization may be purchased from the Chicago Bar Association by calling (312) 554-2057 and for the Springfield event by calling (217) 558-8934. Funds raised at the events will be used for educational programs developed by the two sponsoring organizations. Event information is available at . www.whokilledabrahamlincoln.com

    Judge James B Zagel, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, will preside over the September 23 re-trial of Mary Surratt in Chicago. He will be joined by a prosecution team of attorneys Dan Webb and Jim Montgomery, and the defense team of Ed Genson and Karen Conti. Broadcast journalist Bill Kurtis will set the scene with trial “coverage.” The actress portraying Mary Surratt will be named soon.

    Appellate Court Judge Thomas Appleton will preside over the October 3 re- trial in Springfield, joined by Assistant Sangamon County State’s Attorney Bill Davis and local attorneys Carol Posegate, Steven Beckett and Greg Harris. Springfield actress Aasne Vigessa will portray Mary Surratt. Former WUIS Radio journalist Rich Bradley will provide “coverage” at the Springfield event. The case of Mary Surratt, unlike the dramatization in the recently released film The Conspirator, will be tried using modern rules of evidence as a dramatically presented court proceeding rather than the original 1865 military tribunal that used procedures that limited the scope of Mary Surratt’s defense. At the end of the arguments by the prosecution and defense, audience members will determine her guilt or innocence.

    The participating attorneys will use their own words and strategies to make their cases as they interact with the judges, who will rule on objections and give instructions to the jurors. Surratt owned a boarding house in Washington, DC where John Wilkes Booth and other conspirators, including Surratt’s son, met to plot President Lincoln’s assassination. Historians have long debated whether Mrs. Surratt was innocent or guilty, and if guilty, whether the death penalty was the appropriate punishment.

    The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum ( www.presidentlincoln.org ) is the nation’s largest and most visited presidential library complex, and immerses visitors in Lincoln’s life and times. The Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission ( www.illinoiscourthistory.org ) assists the Supreme Court in acquiring, collecting, documenting, preserving, and cataloging documents and artifacts important to the history of the Illinois judicial system.

    http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v...yID=20359&on=1

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