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Thread: Notable Virginia Executions

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    Notable Virginia Executions



    Nov 11, 1831

    Nat Turner executed in Virginia



    Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, is hanged in Jerusalem, the county seat.

    Turner, a slave and educated minister, believed that he was chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery. On August 21, 1831, he initiated his slave uprising by slaughtering Joseph Travis, his slave owner, and Travis' family. With seven followers, Turner set off across the countryside, hoping to rally hundreds of slaves to join his insurrection. Turner planned to capture the county armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their pursuers.

    During the next two days and nights, Turner and 75 followers rampaged through Southampton County, killing about 60 whites. Local whites resisted the rebels, and then the state militia--consisting of some 3,000 men--crushed the rebellion. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, Turner and all his followers were dispersed, captured, or killed. In the aftermath of the rebellion, scores of African Americans were lynched, though many of them had not participated in the revolt. Turner himself was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing without regret to his role in the bloodshed, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. On November 11, he was hanged in Jerusalem.

    On the morning of his execution Nat Turner, dressed in rags, was led to a gnarled oak tree northeast of Jerusalem. By most accounts he was calm. The Norfolk Herald reported that “He betrayed no emotion, but appeared to be utterly reckless of the awful fate that awaited him, and even hurried the executioner in the performance of his duty.” A crowd had gathered, and the sheriff asked Turner if he had anything to say. He replied only, “I’m ready.” After the rope was thrown over a branch and he jerked into the air, “not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move,” the Petersburg Intelligencer reported.

    Turner's rebellion was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history and led to a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves.

    http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...ed-in-virginia

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    From the Richmond Dispatch, November 12, 1897, p. 6. (See also “The Last Five Hangings in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.”) Research of this topic, including discovery of this article, was accomplished by Daniel Allen Hearn, Botsford, Connecticut.

    Died on Scaffold

    Execution of Edward Hankins at Chatham Yesterday
    For the Murder of Dr. John Roy Cabell

    — The Last Moments of the Condemned — Death Was Instantaneous — His Confession.


    Danville, VA., November 11. — (Special.) — Edward Hankins this afternoon expiated the crime of killing of Dr. John Roy Cabell in Northern Pittsylvania County on August 26th last. The execution of the murderer took place in Chatham jail at 2:26 o'clock, in the presence of about eighteen witnesses, though hundreds of eager men stood about the jail enclosure, despite rain and raw atmosphere, anxious to see and hear anything bearing on the enactment of the solemn scene within the prison walls. Not the slightest hitch in the arrangements for the execution occurred, and the fatal plunge of the condemned through the trap door of the scaffold marked the instant passage of Edward Hankins from life to death. His neck was broken, and he died without a struggle.

    He Slept Well

    Hankins slept well last night, and at 9 o'clock this morning ate moderately of the breakfast supplied from Sheriff W. I. Ovebey's family table. During the morning Miss Jennie Nelson, principal, and several of the young ladies of the Episcopal Female College, of Chatham, sang to the prisoner in his cell, and he was visited also by Rev. C. O. Pruden, rector of the Episcopal church, and by Rev. T. A. Hall, of the Baptist church, the latter spending hours with him, and administering final spiritual consolation at the scaffold. The gallows was erected in an improvised death chamber constructed about a small rear porch of the jail, the whole being about 8 by 14 feet square. In the centre of the floor the death trap, about 2 1-2 feet square, opened into a 10-foot deep pit. Two uprights of heavy timber, one at either side of the trap, supported the crossbeam from which was suspended the noose. Into this small boxlike arrangement were crowded the witnesses, when, at 2:20 o'clock P. M., Sheriff Overbey directed the deputies to bring the prisoner from his cell.

    Walked Steadily

    Hankins walked steadily from the jail corridor into the scaffold-room, accompanied by the officers and the Rev. T. A. Hall. The condemned man was calm and cool. Not a muscle of his face quivered as the irons were placed about his ankles and the noose around his neck. The black cap was quickly slipped over his head, and then followed a brief prayer. There was a moment of suspense, and then the floor gave way, and Hankins disappeared below it into the dark cellar, the body remaining perfectly motionless. In twelve minutes after the drop the last faint flutter of the heart died away, though Dr. R. W. Martin, Jr., the physician in attendance, declared the man dead the instant the first shock came, it breaking his neck. A half-hour later the body was cut down and turned over to a representative of the State Anatomical Board, and will be expressed to-night to the University College of Medicine, of Richmond.

    Hankins made a rambling written statement some days ago, which was delivered to Rev. T. A. Hall, to be made public after the execution. The substance of this statement is that Dr. Cabell first assaulted Hankins, who eventually kicked the Doctor to death. It is not given entire credence by the people of this section.

    Hanks was a tenant on one of Dr. Cabell's places, and the Doctor gave him notice to leave. He demanded pay for certain work he claimed to have done for the Doctor, and a quarrel ensued, resulting in the murder. Hanks was a powerful man in the prime of life, and his victim was of delicate physique and advanced in years.

    http://www.victorianvilla.com/sims-m.../hankins/e/01/

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    1870s killer cracked in face of his cellmate's lynching

    George Smiley had killed sister's lover, but never received his punishment after vigilante assault

    Joseph Black had seduced the sister of his good friend, George Smiley. In November 1870, he paid a heavy price for it when Smiley took a carving knife to him and ended his life in a Staunton boarding house.

    Smiley's April 1871 trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict, most likely arguing over whether the homicide was justifiable. Smiley was returned to jail to await a continuance of his trial, but thanks to a bizarre and tragic turn of events he never again saw the inside of a courtroom.

    On April 8, one day after Smiley's return to jail, a well-known desperado and horse thief named John Hodges was captured just east of Staunton after a fracas in a farmer's barn. Hodges was charged with breaking and entering with intent to steal and attempted murder. In the dustup, he had shot a young local man, who hovered near death.

    Hodges was taken to Staunton where he was thrown into the cell occupied by George Smiley. Here the two men sat for the next three days, undoubtedly pondering their fates.

    If convicted, Smiley faced the death penalty. Hodges, too, would be hanged if the young man he had shot died.

    However, only one of these men would receive that ultimate punishment.

    Shortly after midnight April 11, armed men surrounded the Augusta County jail and demanded that Hodges be turned over to them. When the jailer refused, the men broke into the building and went to the cell that held Hodges and Smiley.

    Jailer George Harlan again refused to cooperate and would not open the cell door; the men used crowbars to pry it open. Inside the cell, Hodges probably knew the men were coming for him. He was notorious throughout Virginia and had been even before the Civil War.

    But Smiley — poor George Smiley — did not know that. All he knew was that there were men smashing their way into his cell, obviously with vigilante justice on their minds. He cringed in terror as the men entered his cell, and one can only speculate as to his mental state when the men, instead of taking him, laid hands on Hodges. Without a backward glance at Smiley, the men whisked Hodges out of the jail. His corpse was found the next morning hanging from an oak tree on the Greenville Road two miles from Staunton.

    It was determined that Smiley should be present at the inquest to offer his testimony of what had happened. So he was taken from his jail cell to the scene of the hanging, and it was here that Smiley's already-loosened grip on reality gave way completely.

    "The sight was shocking to the senses of calm men — to Smiley it was simply awful," wrote the Petersburg Index. "He there saw suspended from a tree the ghastly figure of Hodges, pinioned hand and foot. That ghastly face! That dangling form! That spiritless body!

    "It sunk like flaming steel into the very soul and mind of Smiley," continued the Index. "Reason gave way and Smiley is pronounced an almost hopeless lunatic."

    Staunton officials, thinking the ministrations of his wife, Barbara, and children might restore him to health, allowed him to return to his home in Mount Crawford on a bail of $1,000.

    But, as the Index noted, "there was no rest for his perturbed spirit." In fact, he got worse, and after a few days he was brought back to the Augusta County jail.

    "Smiley is once more locked up in the cells of the jail, and there he is today, mind tempest-tossed, soul-sick, bodily wearing away, a wreck of his former self," wrote the Index in May.

    Smiley never returned to trial for the killing of his best friend. He was admitted to Western Lunatic Asylum, but at some point improved enough to go home. He died at the age of 58 on July 7, 1881, at his home in Mount Crawford. Smiley is buried in the Mount Crawford Cemetery.

    http://www.newsleader.com/article/20...LE22/103050312

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    Gunfire in the Courtroom

    Barely more than a century ago, Floyd Allen and son Claude met their fate on death row in a Richmond prison. Their clash with the law in the Carroll County Courthouse, killing a judge and four others, still stands as one of the most notorious events in Virginia history.

    BY GARY ROBERTSON
    Issue: April 2013
    Posted: 4/16/13


    Photo courtesy Library of Virginia

    At 1:31 p.m. on March 28, 1913, Floyd Allen was pronounced dead by electrocution at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. He was 56 years old, and it was said that he faced death silently and unafraid.

    “I’m ready to go,” he whispered, as he seated himself in the electric chair.

    Eleven minutes later, his 23-year-old son, Claude — a dark-haired charmer, who had a reputation for making women tremble with his good looks — followed his father without protest into the death chamber, his pace steady without hesitation.

    The penitentiary had encountered early failures with its new electric chair, installed in 1908, and officials wanted to be certain that dead was dead. So, Floyd Allen was subjected to 2,000 volts of electricity four times in succession. Claude was pronounced dead after two rounds of voltage.

    They were the 47th and 48th inmates to die in the electric chair in Virginia.

    When their bodies, dressed in dark suits, were taken to Bliley’s Funeral Home at Third and Marshall streets, the Times-Dispatch estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 people passed by their remains to take a last look.

    “The scene was one of the most astounding that can be conceived, revealing an extent of morbidity difficult to comprehend,” the Times-Dispatch reported.

    Claude Allen’s suit lapel bore the gold medal that supporters had commissioned for him.
    The inscription read, “PRESENTED TO CLAUDE ALLEN FOR DEFENDING HIS FATHER.”

    And so it was that one of the most gripping, emotional and sensational sagas in Virginia history — which began with the courtroom shooting deaths of a judge, sheriff, prosecutor, juror and the mortal wounding of a witness, in the Carroll County Courthouse in 1912 — ended with a raucous crowd of gawkers peering into the caskets of the two most prominent figures in the events that transfixed Virginia and, for a time, the nation.
    ----------------------
    The shootings at the Carroll County Courthouse on March 14, 1912, and their aftermath have inspired more than a dozen books, at least one play, scores of research papers, folk ballads, countless inquiries about creating a movie from the events and a tourism hotspot for the Carroll County Historical Society.

    “It brings a lot of people in here,” says Nancy Morris, the historical society’s curator at the old courthouse, where the society has a museum and displays that tell the story of what happened that day.


    Photo courtesy Library of Virginia

    Carroll County, in the southwestern corner of the state, now has a new courthouse, and the only original links to the shootings at the old courthouse in Hillsville are two bullet holes in an outdoor wooden stairway that curves up the front of the courthouse, under a portico.

    The number of shots fired in the courtroom and during a gun battle outside has remained a source of conjecture. A civil engineer employed by the state testified that he had found 38 bullet holes in the courtroom, but only one bullet was intact.

    Souvenir hunters working with pocketknives within days of the shootout had dug out all the rest.
    Nineteen bullets were found in the bodies of the victims; all told 57 bullets were accounted for. That doesn’t include the shots fired outside as court officials and deputies exchanged gunfire with members of the Allen clan. Besides the five people who died, seven were wounded.

    Initial stories from out-of-town newspapers and wire services portrayed the shootout as hillbillies run amok.

    No doubt the Allen clan led by Floyd Allen — a farmer who had served as a sheriff’s deputy and deputy treasurer in Carroll County — were hill people. Some were whiskey distillers, others farmers or storekeepers. One was a postal carrier.

    But a political feud, long-simmering personal disagreements and the court’s acquiescence to a gun culture that permitted all parties to carry guns into the courtroom — the clerk of the court had two — also contributed to the slaughter.

    None of the Allens or their extended relations were known to run from a fight, whether with others or between themselves. Floyd Allen bore the scars of 13 bullet wounds, five inflicted by members of his own family, according to newspaper accounts.

    Allen had come to the courthouse on the day of the shootout to face a jury verdict on a charge of “rescuing prisoners.” He was accused of aiding the escape of his two nephews, Wesley and Sidna Edwards, who had gotten into a fight at a church service with a group of neighborhood boys.

    Arrest warrants were issued charging them with disturbing a religious gathering. The nephews, at Floyd Allen’s suggestion, fled to nearby Mount Airy, N.C., hoping that in time the incident would be forgotten.

    It wasn’t, and after discussions with law enforcement officials, Allen agreed to go after his nephews and return them for trial. On his way home from the discussions, he encountered two deputies who had his nephews in custody. They had been handcuffed and tied with rope to a buggy in which they were being transported.

    Allen became enraged and freed his nephews, taking the deputies’ guns and assaulting one of them.

    The political overtones of the shootout were that Floyd Allen and his family were mostly Democrats, and the political machinery in Carroll County had been wrested from the party in recent elections by a Republican coalition.

    Floyd Allen believed that Court Clerk Dexter Goad and Commonwealth’s Attorney William Foster, both strong Republicans, were out to get him.

    On the day of the shootout, Judge Thornton Massie disregarded advice to have those entering the courtroom, estimated to be anywhere from 100 to 250, searched for firearms.

    Floyd Allen was tried on March 13, 1912, on charges of rescuing prisoners. But the jury’s verdict was delayed until the next day.

    Court Clerk Dexter Goad read it, but Judge Massie said it wasn’t in the proper legal form, and it was rewritten, handed to the jury foreman for his signature, then the foreman handed it to Sheriff Lewis Webb and he handed it back to Goad to be read again.

    “We the jury,” Goad intoned, “find the defendant Floyd Allen guilty as charged in the within indictment and fix his punishment at confinement in the penitentiary of this state for one year.”

    One of Allen’s attorneys made a motion that the verdict be set aside because of newly discovered evidence, and indicated that he could have affidavits prepared and witnesses brought in by the next morning.

    He asked that Allen be freed on bail until then. But the judge denied it. He ordered the sheriff to take charge of the prisoner.

    Within seconds, the chair Floyd Allen had been leaning back in slapped to the floor on all legs. As Sheriff Webb moved toward him, Allen rose.

    “Gentlemen, I ain’t a’goin,” he said.

    The words struck like a thunderbolt in the courtroom.

    Accounts vary widely about what happened next. Some say Allen started unbuttoning his sweater; others say he reached up under it.

    Whatever he did, the shooting started soon afterward.

    Yet to this day, no one can say with certainty who fired the first shot.

    During testimony over a long series of trials, some witnesses testified that Clerk Dexter Goad fired first when he saw Floyd Allen reach under his sweater. Others say it was Sheriff Webb. Still others say it was one of the Allen family members in the rear of the courtroom.

    This is certain, however: There was plenty of firepower available. Floyd Allen had a .38-caliber revolver hidden in his clothes. Clerk Goad had two pistols. The deputy clerk, the chief prosecutor and the deputy prosecutor all carried pistols as well. Several members of the Allen clan and their extended families were armed, too, as were all the court deputies.

    All the guns, all the shooting, all the killing is what has kept the memory of the event alive, says author Ron Hall, a Carroll County native who has written extensively about the shootout.

    “Think of the OK Corral,” he says. “It only lasted 30 seconds, but we still remember that.”

    The courtroom shootout in Hillsville lasted for much longer, as the gun battle moved out of the courtroom and into the streets of Hillsville, and as the participants emptied their weapons and then reloaded.

    Hall, author of The Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy, says the shootout, and the subsequent manhunt for escaped perpetrators, was front-page news across the country for weeks — only displaced with the sinking of the Titanic passenger liner on April 15, 1912.

    Virginia Gov. William Hodges Mann ordered the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in Roanoke to send its men to Hillsville. A hardened group known for their pugnacity and marksmanship, the Baldwin-Felts detectives were empowered to restore order and hunt down the fugitives who had fled the carnage.

    The governor said no cost should be spared to make the apprehensions. Approximately 50 detectives were dispatched, and the state militia was ordered to stand by, in the event they were needed. At one point, hundreds of detectives, militia and special deputies were engaged in the manhunt.

    Floyd Allen, who had been shot in the hip and thigh and couldn’t travel, and his oldest son, Victor, who didn’t have a gun in the courtroom and was later acquitted of all charges, were found in a Hillsville hotel the day after the shootings. They offered no resistance, but Floyd tried to cut his own throat with a small pocketknife. Floyd and Victor were the first to be captured.

    The search for the rest of the Allens and their relatives involved in the shootout consumed six months, ranging from the hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia to Des Moines, Iowa.

    By May 1912, even as the search for other participants continued, the prosecution was ready to bring Floyd Allen to trial. At the request of defense counsel, the trial was moved to Wytheville, about 30 miles away.

    The prosecution wanted to prove that Allen and his family had engaged in a conspiracy to wipe out the entire court. Allen pleaded self-defense, asserting that he had begun firing his pistol only after Dexter Goad and others began shooting at him.

    The jury returned a guilty verdict of first-degree murder against Allen in the death of Commonwealth’s Attorney William Foster. First-degree murder carried the death sentence.

    Floyd’s son Claude was the next to stand trial.

    Hall says that during the period between the shootings and the start of the trial, sentiment had been building that Claude Allen had been involved, only because he was trying to defend his father.

    Newspaper writers saw Claude as a romantic element for their stories, because he was handsome, mannerly and had a devoted and attractive girlfriend, Nellie Wisler, who was in love with him. They were planning to marry.

    Claude was tried for the murder of Judge Thornton Massie. But the prosecution failed to prove that he was part of a conspiracy, and the jury convicted him of second-degree murder and sentenced him to 15 years in prison

    But his troubles were not over.

    He subsequently was tried twice for the murder of the commonwealth’s attorney. The first trial ended in a hung jury, but when he was tried again the jury returned a verdict of first-degree murder.

    Now that Floyd and Claude Allen had both been convicted of first-degree murder, they had only to await sentencing. That came on Sept. 19, 1912, in Wytheville when they were both ordered “to be put to death” at the penitentiary.

    The date of their executions was set for Nov. 22, 1912.

    Trials for the others charged in the shootings would continue. But the public’s focus was squarely on Floyd and Claude.

    Petitions began circulating to commute their death sentences, because none of the others who had been charged and convicted in the courthouse shootings faced execution.

    Moreover, the prosecution had largely failed to produce compelling evidence of a premeditated conspiracy to kill the court officers.

    Nellie Wisler, Claude’s fiancée, wrote to newspapers and to the governor asking for leniency.
    Prominent personalities also came forward. Among them were Richard E. Byrd, the Speaker of the House
    of Delegates; the Rev. George McDaniel of Richmond’s First Baptist Church; and U.S. Sen. Claude A. Swanson of Virginia.

    To ensure that all appeals could be heard, Gov. Mann repeatedly rescheduled the date of the executions.
    Finally, March 28, 1913, was settled on as the day Floyd and Claude would die.

    That settled, Mann embarked on a trip to Trenton, N.J., where he was to give a speech.
    Then events took a bizarre turn.

    As soon as the governor left the state, supporters of Floyd and Claude Allen approached Lt. Gov. J. Taylor Ellyson and offered the opinion that as acting chief executive of Virginia, he had the power to commute the death sentences.

    The Allens were scheduled to face the electric chair early the next morning.

    On the night of March 27, Ellyson asked Virginia Attorney General Samuel W. Williams about the constitutionality of the request and did he have such powers? (The attorney later ruled that Ellyson did not have that authority.)

    The warden of the penitentiary was reached, and postponed the executions until he received other instructions.

    The New York Times reported that Gov. Mann was awakened at 2:55 a.m. on March 28 in Philadelphia, where he and his family were staying until it was time for his speech in New Jersey.

    The governor dressed and immediately went to the train station to board a train for Virginia. He arrived in Alexandria at 8 a.m. and wired officials in Richmond that he was still the governor of the state and was within Virginia’s borders. He ordered the executions to be carried out without delay.

    A crowd protesting the executions had gathered at the train station in Richmond to face the governor when he arrived at 11:30 a.m., and police rushed to the scene to protect him.

    The executions proceeded apace.

    Last year, Carroll County commemorated the 100th anniversary of the courthouse shootings.
    One of the signature events of the commemoration was a play, Thunder in the Hills, that depicted what happened during the courthouse shootings, but also provided insights into the possible motivations of the central participants.

    Frank Levering, a local writer and a Carroll County native, wrote and directed the play.

    Eleven sold-out performances were staged at the old courthouse, and the waiting list for tickets grew to more than 2,000.

    “It was quite something,” Levering says. “The feedback was tremendously positive.

    “So many people told me and the actors and the historical society that for the first time, they had a clear picture of both sides, and the conflicts between them. It is a tragedy that encompassed virtually everybody.”

    The play is scheduled to be reprised this year, though the dates have not yet been set.

    By train and wagon, Floyd and Claude Allen’s bodies were returned to Carroll County.

    A funeral on Sunday, March 30, 1913, drew a reported 5,000 people. The burial site was near Floyd’s home, against a backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

    Victor Allen, Floyd Allen’s eldest and surviving son, unpinned the gold medallion citing Claude’s Allen’s defense of his father from Claude’s chest.

    He pressed it into the hand of Nellie Wisler.

    http://www.richmondmagazine.com/arti...13.html?page=4
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Senior Member Member Diggler's Avatar
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    Heres the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Allen

    I bet Heidi's related to them. Moonshine.

    Diggler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Diggler View Post
    Heres the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Allen

    I bet Heidi's related to them. Moonshine.

    Diggler
    Nope, Carroll County is on the other side of the state, and my North Carolina kin were the moonshiners!
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    The executions of the following four inmates were recorded with audio, with live commentary as it was being carried out.

    Richard Whitley, 1987
    Alton Waye, 1989
    Richard Boggs, 1990
    Wilbert Lee Evans, 1990


    If you go to the link in the story you can listen to the tapes yourself.

    NPR uncovered secret execution tapes from Virginia. More remain hidden

    by Chiara Eisner
    NPR

    On a summer's day in 2006, inside an apartment not far from Virginia's old death chamber, an 82-year-old man handed over a briefcase to an archivist. The bag held four execution recordings so rare, similar tapes from another state had been released just once before in history.

    When executions take place, only a few people are permitted to attend as witnesses. Since prisons forbid even those journalists, lawyers and family members from recording audio or images, virtually no physical evidence from their vantage point exists from any state. But they're not the only ones watching. Prison employees also see what happens in the death chamber – and they sometimes tape it.

    The cassettes in the briefcase were recorded by staff, and the donor, R. M. Oliver, had worked in Virginia prisons for years. But how that government audio ended up in his bag – and why he privately donated it to the Library of Virginia – is a mystery. Oliver left his last position with the Department of Corrections in Richmond before any of the executions were taped. His family said he took the story to his grave when he died.

    The four tapes were marked as "restricted" in the archives of the Library of Virginia in Richmond.

    "Dad kept it a secret from us," said his son, Stephen Oliver. "I don't even remember seeing that briefcase."

    The tapes from Oliver's bag remained unavailable for 16 years. The library initially restricted them and planned to keep them off limits for decades more. But NPR argued for their public release and obtained the audio in 2022.

    An NPR investigation can now reveal the tapes show the prison neglected to record key evidence during what was considered one of Virginia's worst executions, and staff appeared unprepared for some of the jobs they were tasked to do in the death chamber.

    Before Virginia abolished capital punishment in 2021, the state executed more people than any other in America. This is the first time audio recorded during any of those executions has ever been published.

    Behind the scenes: "We didn't know for sure"
    Minutes before he was scheduled to die by the electric chair, Alton Waye used his last words to forgive the workers who would soon have to help kill him.

    "I'd like to express that what is about to occur here is a murder," he starts by saying on the tape.

    An employee whispers the rest of Waye's statement into the recorder: "And that he forgives the people involved in this murder. And that I don't hate nobody and that I love them."

    That worker then checked in with another colleague to see if he had heard the statement correctly. He hadn't.

    "I'm trying to get it," the second man responds. "I would like to express that what is about to take place here is a murder. Did anyone else catch the rest of that?"

    Oliver's briefcase also contained other official execution documents from the prison, like this photo of Alton Waye that was taken before he was executed in 1989.

    The prison eventually got Waye's words down right. But the other tapes show uncertainty was common in the death chamber. At the beginning of the narration of Richard Whitley's execution in 1987, the staff seemed confused about how they were supposed to record the event.

    "We're not using a blank tape?" one worker asks, before a second wonders out loud if the recorder was turned on.

    The prison staff seemed still more unprepared during the electrocution of Richard Boggs. For more than two minutes, staff can be heard on the tape appearing to struggle to connect a call from one of the only people with the power to cancel an execution at the last moment.

    "We need to get 306 clear, the governor's office is calling," a worker says.

    The situation was urgent.

    "Debbie, they are strapping him in the chair!" a second woman exclaims. "Hold on a minute."

    If the governor wanted to save Boggs' life, he would need to be connected with someone in the death chamber quickly. Minutes passed, however, and the issue appeared unresolved. A third employee predicted they would have to cut Debbie off in order to connect the governor.

    "Let me call Switchboard and see what's going on," one of the workers interjects, before a line appears to go dead.

    Boggs was eventually executed. The governor, L. Douglas Wilder, had not called to spare him. But if Wilder had felt differently – and had the staff not been able to connect him in time – Virginia could have come close to carrying out the execution of a pardoned man.

    "We didn't know for sure whether you had contact down there with the governor's office," one of the workers reiterates on the tape.

    The fourth and final recording revealed a more serious oversight.

    Local reporters who watched the execution of Wilbert Lee Evans in 1990 said they witnessed one of the worst in Virginia's history. Three journalists wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that, following the administration of the first jolt of electricity from the chair, Evans started to bleed from his eyes, mouth and nose.

    "Blood flowed from under the leather death mask," observed a journalist from the Virginian-Pilot.

    A reporter from a third newspaper, the Alexandria Journal, said something similar.

    "He started bubbling blood," Geoff Brown observed, "and it ran down his belly and his shirt."

    But the tape the prison created during Evans' execution recorded none of those details.

    "It is 11:04, the first surge of electricity has been administered," an employee states.

    It was right after that first jolt that reporters said the blood started streaming down Evans' chin and soaking his shirt. The voice of the narrator can be heard breaking on tape. But if she was affected by the scene, she didn't clarify the reason. She never mentioned any evidence of blood.

    "It is 11, 11:05," she stutters. "The second surge of electricity has been administered."

    Then, minutes later, just: "The inmate has expired."

    "What is the state trying to cover up?"

    None of the 27 states that currently allow the death penalty use the chair as their primary method of execution anymore. Most have switched to lethal injection. But mistakes in the death chamber are still common.

    In 2022, more than a third of the 20 executions that were attempted across the country were botched. The governor of Tennessee called off an execution after he learned staff had failed to test the chemicals they were planning on using for contamination. Workers in Texas struggled for more than half an hour to place an IV into a disabled man's neck.

    Official cover ups after the executions go wrong are also not unusual. Behind closed doors, on July 28, 2022, execution workers in Alabama took more than three hours to set an IV line into Joe James, Jr.'s body. The state said nothing out of the ordinary happened during that time. But a nonprofit, Reprieve, obtained permission from his family to conduct an autopsy afterwards. It revealed multiple puncture wounds, bruises, and evidence that the state may have cut into his skin to find a vein, said Blaire Andres, who leads death penalty projects for Reprieve.

    The Alabama Department of Corrections provided this undated photo of Joe Nathan James, Jr. to the press.

    "All of that was hidden from view from the journalists that were supposed to witness the execution," said Andres. "If the state is doing everything correctly, they shouldn't have anything to hide. So it does raise the question, what is the state trying to cover up?"

    The Alabama Department of Corrections did not respond to NPR's request for comment. The same question now remains open in Virginia, too. Though the library eventually released the tapes Oliver donated, NPR discovered the Department of Corrections has more audio that it's still choosing to keep hidden from the public.

    After NPR requested all remaining execution audio from the agency under the Freedom of Information Act, Corrections confirmed it has at least six additional audio files with 70 minutes of tape recorded on them. But it refused to share the tapes. It also declined an interview request.

    In an email, a representative from the agency defended the decision to keep the audio concealed. Because the tapes are private prison records, private health records and contain confidential personnel information, the agency does not have to share them, the representative wrote.

    An attorney who teaches at the University of Virginia's law school, Ian Kalish, reviewed the email. He said Corrections seemed to be acting in a manner contrary to the intention of the state's public records law, which was designed to grant people access to government files."These types of records are really key to facilitating public oversight and holding public bodies and government actors accountable," Kalish said. "It's very concerning to me that this type of information is being withheld."

    As long as Corrections refuses to reveal the rest of the execution audio, Oliver's tapes could be the only existing content from inside Virginia's death chamber that people can hear. Together with the 19 execution tapes from Georgia that an attorney subpoenaed during a court case, the two sets are the only pieces of publicly available audio evidence from the more than 1,500 executions that have taken place across the U.S. during the past 50 years.

    Whether Oliver knew how significant the four tapes would be when he gave them away is unclear. But Roger Christman, the archivist who collected the briefcase from Oliver's apartment back in 2006, thinks he may have had an idea.

    "He was really happy that he could find a home for these records," Christman remembered. "He thought they were very important."

    https://www.npr.org/2023/01/19/11495...tapes-virginia
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Virginia DOC says execution audio tapes should remain secret

    By: Associated Press

    In a 1989 audio recording crackling with static, an inmate is barely audible as he offers his last words before he is executed in Virginia's electric chair.

    “I would like to express that what is about to take place ... is a murder," Alton Waye — who was convicted of raping and murdering a 61-year-old woman — can be heard saying, before a prison employee clumsily tries to repeat what Waye said into a tape recorder.

    “And that he forgives the people who's involved in this murder. And that I don’t hate nobody and that I love them," the employee says.

    The recording of Waye's execution, which was recently published by NPR, is one of at least 35 audio tapes in the possession of the Virginia Department of Corrections documenting executions between 1987 and 2017, the department recently confirmed.

    The Waye recording offers a rare public glimpse into an execution, a government proceeding often shrouded in secrecy and only witnessed by a select few, including prison officials, victims, family members and journalists. Even those who are allowed to witness are often prevented from seeing or hearing the entire execution process.

    But the department has no plans to allow more recordings to be released to the public.

    The Associated Press sought the Virginia audio tapes under the state's open records law after NPR recently reported on the existence of four execution recordings, including the Waye tape, that had long been in the possession of the Library of Virginia.

    But shortly after NPR aired its story, the Department of Corrections asked for the tapes back and the library complied. The department then rejected the AP’s request for copies of all of the execution recordings in its possession, citing exemptions to records law covering security concerns, private health records and personnel information.

    Several death penalty experts said the four recordings in Virginia and another 23 Georgia execution tapes released two decades ago are believed to be the only publicly available recordings of executions in the U.S.

    Richard Dieter, the acting interim director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks and has been highly critical of capital punishment, said he would not be surprised if some other states have secretly recorded executions “just to protect themselves" against lawsuits.

    “States are wary of things being done right and being challenged in court, and want to have their evidence,” Dieter said.

    “So much is secretive that I don't know that they would want to reveal if they have such tapes," he said.

    A 2018 report by the center found that of the 17 states that carried out a total of 246 lethal-injection executions between January 2011 and August 2018, 14 states prevented witnesses from seeing at least part of the execution, while 15 states prevented witnesses from hearing what was happening inside the execution chamber.

    Virginia, long one of the country's busiest death penalty states, ended capital punishment in 2021, and lawmakers have since defeated legislative efforts to bring it back for certain crimes. But researchers and transparency advocates said the department's decision to withhold the tapes raised concerns and would limit the ability to scrutinize or research previous executions.

    The tapes obtained in NPR's investigation were donated to the library in 2006 by a now-deceased former Department of Corrections employee named R. M. Oliver, the library said in a statement to AP.

    NPR reported that how Oliver ended up with the tapes and why he donated them remains a mystery.

    Carla Lemons, a spokeswoman for DOC, said the files that ended up at the library were taken “without VDOC’s knowledge or permission.” The department asked for them back “so we could appropriately maintain them with the other execution files in the agency’s possession,” Lemons wrote in an email.

    The library said it agreed after consulting with its legal counsel.

    Lemons said the DOC generally keeps execution records in its possession until at least 50 years after the execution. She defended the department’s decision to withhold the records.

    “Although the department may have discretion to release certain materials contained within the execution files, VDOC gives deference to the privacy interests of current and former VDOC employees, victims, and inmates and, therefore, chooses not to publicly release these sensitive materials,” she wrote.

    Dale Brumfield, an author, journalist and death penalty opponent who has written a book about capital punishment and its abolition in Virginia, said he also received the four tapes NPR covered last year from the library after an initial request was rejected years earlier.

    Brumfield said he thinks the value of the tapes to the average listener is minimal, though he said they offer insight when compared to other records and news accounts.

    NPR cited accounts by three local reporters who watched the 1990 execution of Wilbert Lee Evans — who was convicted of murdering a sheriff's deputy — and said that after the administration of the first jolt of electricity from the electric chair, Evans started to bleed from his eyes, mouth and nose.

    But the tape of the execution does not record those details. The DOC employee who narrated the recording did not mention any evidence of blood.

    Brumfield said state law has forbidden taking pictures and shooting video during the execution process since the early 20th century.

    “It's the only window into a live execution that we’ve ever had," Brumfield said of the tapes.

    Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said that the exemptions cited by DOC in its denial of AP's request to release the tapes follow the pattern of many law enforcement, judicial and corrections agencies.

    “There’s a tendency or a knee-jerk response to withhold everything," she said.

    "It takes everything off the table, and the public and the advocates and lawmakers are all left in the dark trying to figure out what’s the best way to administer our justice system," she said.

    Dieter said that following a string of bungled executions in recent years, some states that allow the death penalty have passed new secrecy laws that prevent the public from obtaining information about executions. He said he favors releasing the recordings.

    “Executions have been botched ... you just don’t know what’s going on, and it’s a matter of life and death," Dieter said.

    https://www.wtkr.com/news/virginia-d...-remain-secret
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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