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Thread: Washington Capital Punishment History

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Washington Capital Punishment History

    The first hangings occurred on January 5, 1849, when Cussas and Quallahworst, two Native Americans, were hanged for murder. Executions are rarely carried out in the state — the most executions in one year was five in 1939, and there was an average of less than one hanging per year between 1849 and 1963.

    The death penalty was abolished in 1913 and reinstated in 1919. The statute remained unchanged until 1975, when it was again abolished. A referendum in the same year reinstated it for a second time as the mandatory penalty for aggravated murder in the first degree. Supreme Court of the United States rulings in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976) and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976), 431 U.S. 633 (1977), meant that such a law was unconstitutional and the statute was modified to give detailed procedures for imposing the death penalty.

    This new law was itself found unconstitutional by the Washington Supreme Court, as a person who had pled not guilty could be sentenced to death, while someone who pled guilty would receive a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The current law was passed in 1981 to correct these constitutional defects.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital...shington_state
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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Clark County history: The 'hanging holiday' of 1890

    Edward Gallagher infamous as the only person ever 'legally hanged' in Clark County

    During Vancouver's hanging holiday of 1890, witnesses said Edward Gallagher "fought like a demon" to avoid his doom.

    The convicted murderer was calm when Clark County Sheriff M.J. Fleming led him from his cell that summer afternoon to the makeshift gallows erected just for him at the courthouse square.

    Two hundred ticket-holders were invited by the sheriff, but on Friday, July 11, as many as 500 people — nearly 9 percent of Vancouver's population — cheerfully filled the dirt roads near 11th and Harney in morbid curiosity. A 45-by-80-foot stockade was built to shield the gallows, but that didn't stop the throngs from pouring in to witness the 27-year-old's miserable end.

    It was a celebration of death.

    Parents held their children in the air so they could get a clear view. Others peered through cracks in the barrier. A women sold peanuts 25 feet from the noose.

    Father Schramm offered to pray, but Gallagher refused. He said he didn't believe he would die that day -- despite the bloodthirsty crowd before him, the $225 spent on his execution, the lawmen flanking his left and right.

    Instead, with a "slickly idiotic smile," he apologized to the audience for his appearance and promised he would do better next time. He said "the soldiers" would save him.

    Reality struck when his hands were bound. For three maniacal minutes, Gallagher swung his arms and kicked violently, knocking over the sheriff and his helpers. Seven men finally subdued him.

    The death warrant was read, a black hood pulled over Gallagher's head and the noose tightened. Sheriff Fleming, who was paid $50 for the deed, gave the condemned man one more chance to confess to killing and robbing Lewis Marr, an old farmer found dead on his land in theLower Cascades area of Skamania County.

    "Did you kill that man, or did you not? Now, answer," the sheriff said, according to newspaper accounts.

    From beneath the black hood, Gallagher sneered his last words: "None of your damned business."

    Fleming pulled a lever and Gallagher dropped seven feet through a trap door.

    At that moment, a young girl pushed her way through the now-hushed crowd and sat on a bench, her eyes fixated on the dangling man as life left his body.

    For 11 minutes, according to one newspaper account, she and the townspeople watched as Gallagher swung into infamy as the only man ever to be legally hanged in Clark County.

    Violent start to a violent end

    Nearly 120 years after his death, old newspapers and historical records contain few details about the life of Gallagher before the day he cemented his fate.

    He claimed all along that a miscreant called "Snowball" was the one who shot the farmer on Nov. 9, 1889, and stole $2,000 that was hidden in his house. Marr's body was found in a nearby field, a bullet hole in his chest, buckshot in his shoulder and wounds on his head.

    Gallagher was spotted with another man prowling the property the day of the murder. When he was arrested soon after, Gallagher was carrying part of the Christian Messenger newspaper. A wadded portion of that same edition was near the victim. Snowball, if he ever existed, was never found.

    Skamania County had no jail, so Gallagher was sent to be held in a cell in the basement of Vancouver's old Clark County Courthouse, near where the current courthouse sits at 11th and Franklin streets.

    Gallagher almost died before the law could kill him. A now-legendary fire blazed through the wooden courthouse on the night of Feb. 25, 1890, quickly engulfing the building. As flames spread, staff rushed to safety. Jailer Marion Fleming, the sheriff's son, ran back inside to free the five screaming prisoners trapped in steel cells. The inmates were pulled to safety one by one. Gallagher, the only one facing a murder charge, was the last to be rescued.

    It took four hours of deliberation for a jury to convict him of first-degree murder on May 9. The next month, Gallagher was sentenced to die.

    Public executions uncommon

    Hanging was a common punishment when Gallagher was executed — the newly invented "electric chair" was first used one month later in New York — but not in burgeoning Clark County.

    Such a savage spectacle in Vancouver might seem unthinkable today. Even in 1890, some were shocked that the town would embrace such wretchedness.

    Washington had become a state just one year before, and the region was still teetering between its frontier past and more-civilized present.

    "The days of public executions have gone by in civilized communities," the Vancouver Register wrote in an editorial two days before the hanging. "(But) It will do on the frontier."

    Gallagher's legacy

    After Gallagher's hanging, the crowd went about their day, some taking strands from the noose as souvenirs. Gallagher's body was cut down and covered with a quilt.

    The Vancouver Register newspaper published a follow-up editorial condemning the display.

    "The execution, as we said last week, should never have been made a public affair," the article read. "It is now conceded that we were right, and henceforth, public executions will not be tolerated in this city … it is a disgrace to our civilization."

    Gallagher was unceremoniously buried in the potter's field section of Vancouver's Old City Cemetery, near the bones of pioneers whose names live on as streets and schools.

    But Gallagher's legacy, as brandished on a historical marker placed in the 1990s over his once-unmarked grave, is his violent end. Four words on the gravestone sum up his life: "Died by legal hanging."

    State Hanging Dates

    Clark County residents hanged for murder since 1904:

    • Simon Brooks, 46, laborer. Died May 13, 1906.

    • George E. Whitfield, 22, laborer. Died June 13, 1924.

    • Luther Baker, 61, logger. Died March 29, 1929.

    • Glenn R. Stringer, 24, laborer. Died May 19, 1936.

    • Arley Ovoyd Lewis, 29, musician. Died Jan. 30, 1941.

    • Utah E. Wilson, 22, laborer. Died Jan. 3, 1953.

    • Truman G. Wilson, 26, barber. Died Jan. 3, 1953.

    • John Richard Broderson, 34, mechanic. Died June 25, 1960.

    • Westley Allan Dodd, 31, retail. Died Jan. 5, 1993.

    The Washington State Department of Corrections execution list — from after 1901 when the state took over capital punishment duties from counties — can be found on the website.

    http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/s...-holiday-1890/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  3. #3
    Member Member giallohunter's Avatar
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    Washington State carries out its first execution on May 6, 1904.

    On May 6, 1904, Washington State carries out its first execution. Zenon "James" Champoux is hanged at the State Penitentiary at Walla Walla for the murder of Lottie Brace in Seattle on November 5, 1902. Legal executions prior to this were held in public in the counties where the defendant was convicted.

    The Territorial Legislature first enacted a death penalty statute in 1854. In 1901, the State Legislature amended the statute to require that executions take place at the State Penitentiary.

    Zenon Champoux was a 26-year-old French Canadian prospecting in Alaska when met entertainer Lottie Brace, age 18. Brace promised to marry Champoux, then she left for Spokane and Seattle. She found employment "working as a dance hall girl [prostitute] below the line [south of Yesler Way]" (Star). Champoux found Brace at the Arcade variety theater with her sister Ella. When Brace rejected his advances, he stabbed her in the temple with his knife in front of witnesses. She died later that day.

    A King County jury did not accept his plea of insanity and convicted him of her murder. The judge sentenced him to death. Press reports of the day describe Champoux as speaking only broken English and exhibiting strange behaviors such as insisting on eating only raw meat and vegetables. Champoux said to fellow inmates that if Brace would not love him in this world, he would force her to love him in the next.

    According to press reports, Champoux was awakened at 4:00 a.m. when he exchanged his prison stripes for a new black suit. After praying with a Catholic priest, he was taken to the scaffold and he mounted the steps unassisted and positioned himself over the drop. He made no statement and his only expression of emotion was a tear (or crying, depending on the report) while reading scripture on the platform. Although Champoux was described as dying instantly from the drop, his heart did not stop beating for 17 minutes.

    Washington abolished the death penalty in 1913 and enacted it again in 1919.

    http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm...m&File_Id=5470

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    Member Member giallohunter's Avatar
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    6 have been executed for crimes in county

    Six people have been executed for crimes committed in Snohomish County:

    • Dec. 8, 1905: Angus J. McPhail, 45, hanged at sunrise for fatally shooting a Darrington saloon owner who had been a former business rival. McPhail was a Canadian-born woodsman.

    • May 13, 1910: Richard Quinn, 32, hanged for gunning down his wife in an Everett street during a drunken rage. Quinn's hanging was botched, and he remained lucid for many minutes at the end of the rope.

    • Sept. 6, 1940: Edward L. Bouchard, 46, was hanged for the murders of two men whose bodies were discovered in a wooded area east of Arlington. The Seattle decorator used an ax and garrote on the victims.

    • Nov. 18, 1949: Wayne LeRoy Williams, 33, was hanged for beating his wife with a rock and pushing her and the couple's 4-year-old daughter off a cliff near Mukilteo. The child survived.

    • May 27, 1994: Charles Rodman Campbell, 39, was hanged for the 1982 throat slashing murders of two women and a girl near Clearview. Campbell raped one of the women about a decade before the killings. She had testified against him, sending him to prison for the sexual assault.

    • Aug. 28, 2001: James Homer Elledge, 58, died by lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing and strangulation of a woman at a Lynnwood church. A janitor, he requested the death penalty and directed his attorney not to fight to keep him alive.

    http://www.heraldnet.com/article/201...WS01/705159922

  5. #5
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    Getting the pre-sentence reports for the 5 inmates executed in Washington from 1993-2010 in June. I will upload them to their threads when I receive the files.

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