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Thread: Indiana Capital Punishment History

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Indiana Capital Punishment History

    History of capital punishment in Indiana

    Indiana's capital punishment statute became law in 1897 and for the first decade hanging was the prescribed method. Thirteen prisoners died that way, with the last hanging in 1907.

    The electric chair was introduced in 1913 and the first execution using that method was in 1914.

    State death penalty laws were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. Many states, including Indiana, passed new laws that met the criteria outlined by the ruling. Indiana's death penalty was reinstated in 1977 and the first inmate executed after that point was Steven Judy in 1981.

    In 1995, the Indiana General Assembly approved legislation changing the method of execution to lethal injection.

    The 1800's: Lynchings and vigilante justice

    Lynchings have been known in Indiana since 1810 and as late as 1930. Such ``executions'' often involved two or more offenders, with as many as five on two separate occasions.

    Documented records show 41 people were lynched in Indiana, including 15 blacks and 26 whites.

    Five black men were hanged on the Posey County Courthouse lawn in 1878 at Mount Vernon by a mob that hauled them from the nearby jail. Four of them had been accused of a sex crime against a white woman. The fifth shot and killed a deputy sheriff who was trying to arrest one of the four attackers.

    Blacks accused of attacking white women were lynched on several other occasions at different spots across Indiana.

    The most recent record of a lynching involved two blacks hanged in Marion in 1930.

    Five white men were hanged in 1897 by a mob that stormed the jail at Versailles. Three of the men were already dead - having been beaten by the mob - when they were strung up.

    Perhaps the best remembered lynching involved four members of the notorious Reno gang. In December 1868, a group of Jackson County residents took a train south, stormed the Floyd County jail in New Albany, and hanged Frank, William and Simeon Reno and Charles Anderson from a catwalk.

    The first recorded lynching in Indiana involved two horse thieves who had the misfortune of dealing with settlers who were tired of being robbed. Having no jail at the time at Floyd in Clark County and no judge handy, the settlers dispensed their own frontier justice with firearms.

    The Civil War saw a lynching in 1862 at Newburgh. Two local men were seen talking to Confederate raiders. After the Southerners departed, the townsfolk, loyal to the Union, hanged the two alleged sympathizers.

    In 1870, two men charged with killing an elderly Greenwood couple were taken from the Johnson County Jail at Franklin and hanged. The local lynchers didn't act until they learned the two killers also were wanted for murder in Kentucky. The mob didn't touch another prisoner being held for a separate slaying. Three men were pulled from the jail at Shoals in 1886 and hanged from nearby maple trees near the Courthouse. A fourth murder defendant wasn't touched, but later was hanged legally.

    Indiana's death penalty laws have been on the books since the late 18th century, before statehood was conferred in 1816, according to historical records. State documents show Indiana once put people to death for bigamy, but the penalty was reduced to 100 to 300 lashes.

    The second offense of horse stealing also was a capital crime in the early 1800s, while the winner of a duel could be punished by death if the loser died.

    The Electric Chair

    The death penalty, as it was incorporated into the Criminal Code in 1897, prescribed death by hanging. Thirteen offenders were hanged during the period between 1897 and 1907. Electrocution as the prescribed method of execution was passed into law in 1913. The first electrocution of a condemned prisoner occurred Feb. 20, 1914, 11 months after the legislation was adopted.

    The electric chair itself was said to have been constructed from the old hangman's scaffold, with the back and legs of the chair formed from braces and uprights. The seat and arms were made from the platform, according to historical records. New York's Sing Sing Prison and the Ohio State Prison were both visited and sketches were made of the electric chairs used in those institutions. The Indiana electric chair is patterned after the Ohio electric chair of that period.

    Since the 1930s, the number of executions has dropped substantially in Indiana, with the largest decline coming after World War II.

    In 1938, nine convicts were put to death - the most in any year since 1897. Until Gregory Resnover, there had been no executions for killing a police officer in Indiana since 1949. Resnover's execution came 14 years after the shooting of Indianapolis police officer Jack Ohrberg and 13 years after Resnover was convicted. That is the longest gap between an Indiana conviction and an execution in 97 years.

    Department of Correction records show that executions of blacks were common-place through the early 1930s, but those death sentences also declined after the war. From 1897 to 1907, 13 convicts were hanged. Six were black.

    Another nine black inmates were electrocuted from 1908-32, during a time when there were 20 executions.

    Of the last 43 prisoners put to death - all since 1933 - 10 were black. Before Gregory Resnover, the most recent execution of a black inmate in Indiana was in 1941, when Robert Watts of Marion County was put to death for murder and rape.

    The last person killed in the Indiana State Prison death chamber before the death penalty was outlawed in June 1972 was Richard Kiefer, an Allen County man with three years of schooling who killed his wife in an argument over money. He was executed June 15, 1961.

    According to available information, nearly 30 percent of those executed in Indiana were natives, while about 17 percent were from Kentucky. About 10 percent were foreign-born, including Peter Jankowski, a Roman Catholic Lithuanian executed in 1926 for killing during a robbery.

    More than three-fourths have been in their 20s or 30s. The oldest men executed were both 63 - John Rinkard of Wabash, who was hanged in 1902, and Cleveland Greathouse of Lake County, who was electrocuted in 1945. The youngest was James Swain, 18, of Vanderburgh County. He was executed in 1939.

    In its early history, Indiana had the lowest age in the country, 10, for the death penalty. A bill was passed in the 1987 legislature to raise the age to 16 and in 2002, it was raised again to age 18.

    Women on Death Row

    In July 1986 Paula Cooper, 16, was given the death penalty for the murder of Gary Bible teacher Ruth Pelke, the youngest person in Indiana ever to be sentenced to death. Her sentence was later overturned.

    Only five women have been sentenced to death in Indiana. Debra Denise Brown was sentenced to death in June 1986. She also was sentenced to death or faces the death penalty in other states. Paula Cooper, Cindy Lou Landress and Lois Thacker had their death sentences overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court. Opal Collins was sentenced to death in 1956 for the murders of her husband, his mother and two of his sisters. Her sentence was later reduced to life in prison by Gov. George Craig.

    When an ``Execution Order'' is received from a Court of Law, and all appeals have been exhausted, the institution makes the preparations to carry out the sentence. The order requires the execution to take place ``before the hour of sunrise'' on a given day.

    Before a scheduled execution, an additional officer is assigned to ``X-Row'' (I Cellhouse, where offenders who are sentenced to death are held) to observe the offender under sentence. Prior to the execution, the condemned man is transferred to a holding cell, adjacent to the execution room. The holding cell is where the offender receives his final meal and is offered a visit from a spiritual adviser. Even with the close proximity of the holding cell and the electric chair, the condemned man never saw the electric chair prior to his execution.

    In 1995, the Indiana Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a law making lethal injection the method of execution in Indiana. Tommie Smith became the first person to die by injection on July 18, 1996. Historically, executions have been carried out shortly after midnight on the appointed day.

    In 2003, a $4.5 million remodeling project for Death Row included new locks, security lighting and cell doors. During the project, death row inmates were housed at the Maximum Control Facility in Westville, about 10 miles from the prison.


    http://www.indystar.com/article/9999...ent-in-Indiana

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Historic electric chair gets preserved



    One piece of Indiana’s death penalty history is now on display.

    An electric chair used at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City is now being shown as part of the Indiana Department of Correction’s Reflections of Pride: The History of the IDOC Museum.

    Indiana no longer uses an electric chair. In 1995, the state designated lethal injection as the only way to perform executions. The chair was used from 1913 until the change in 1995.

    The electric chair Indiana created was based on sketches of Ohio’s electric chair. It was created using parts of Indiana’s original hangman scaffold.

    In order to see the chair and other artifacts, people must schedule a tour by emailing mandrick@idoc.in.gov with when they’d like to come by. The museum is located at 2050 N. County Road 50 East in New Castle.

    http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/india...gets-preserved

  3. #3
    jwcool
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    "Lynching" or "vigilantyism" has really gotten a bum rap over the centuries. There really is nothing inherantly wrong with vigilantyism "as long as" you have the guilty party. Yes, some evil people have used this to murder innocent people.People who use this to murder are "murderers" and should die for that crime. Murder is a crime, not vigilantyism.

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