THE LAST PUBLIC HANGING IN THE UNITED STATE

THE LAST PUBLIC HANGING IN THE UNITED STATE

By the time Rainey Bethea was executed on August 14, 1936, most of the United States had ceased executing people publicly. 

This was in large part because of the natural ghoulishness of the event, combined with the propensity for mistakes that make the whole thing even more disturbing to watch. 

(This is still a major problem today with approximately 7% of lethal injection executions being botched in the United States.) 

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.

However, in Kentucky in 1936 an execution could still be held publicly and, according to the jury at his trial, Bethea deserved such an end.

An orphan since about the age of 10, a 26 or 27 year old Bethea was accused of robbing, raping and strangling to death a wealthy 70-year-old Elza Edwards in Owensboro, Daviess County, Kentucky on June 7, 1936. 

Because a potential death sentence for robbery and murder under Kentucky law called for electrocution at the state penitentiary in Eddyville, the prosecutor, wanting the potential execution to take place in Owensboro, only went forward with the charges of rape, which carried the possible sentence of public hanging.

Prior to his trial, Bethea had made several confessions describing how he’d been drunk and had snuck into Elza’s room through a window. 

Although it’s very possible these confessions were coerced (Bethea claimed they were after being sentenced to death), it should be noted that his fingerprints and his ring were found in Elza’s bedroom after her body was discovered. 

Further, in one of his confessions he also told the police where he hid the items he stole from Elza; those items were found in the barn he specified. 

Anticipating that people would claim they had forced Bethea to confess, during his second confession, police invited notary public Robert M. Morton and reporter George H. Koper to attend the confession as witnesses to the fact that, at least while those two were present, no coercion took place.

Lawyers were appointed to represent Bethea, including noted anti-death penalty advocate William W. Kirtley. 

While they initially subpoenaed four individuals, in the end, none of the defense’ witnesses were ever called at trial. This was because, at the trial, Bethea pled guilty.

After the prosecutor closed his case on June 25, 1936, the judge instructed the jury that their only job was to decide whether Bethea should get between 10 and 20 years in the state pen or the death sentence. 

The jury deliberated for less than five minutes and returned with the sentence of death by hanging, a mere three weeks after the crime was committed.

The fact that the whole thing from murder to scheduled hanging was to take place in only about two months, and that a young black man who had previously only been convicted of a few minor, non-violent crimes was now being sentenced to death without any real defense on his behalf being performed, more than a few cried foul.

As such, post-sentence, Bethea found a cadre of black lawyers willing to donate their time to his case.

 They attempted to overturn the first conviction through various means, but all to no avail.

 They did, however, manage to get him a hearing on August 5th in Louisville in front of District Judge Elwood Hamilton. 

During this hearing, Bethea stated all five of his signed confessions were coerced and that he was not given full details of what he was signing in each case. 

On top of that, he claimed his previous lawyers had also forced him to plead guilty. 

In the end, after listening to the testimony of several witnesses who refuted Bethea’s claims, Judge Hamilton decided he wasn’t buying it and the sentence stood.

While normally such an execution wouldn’t have attracted much notice outside of the region the crime was committed, this particular hanging quickly became a topic of great interest throughout the United States. 

This was not because many continued to hold to the notion that Bethea was actually innocent- the evidence against him was just too convincing despite initial skepticism- but rather because the person charged with hanging Bethea, the County sheriff, was a woman, Florence Shoemaker Thompson- the first female sheriff in the U.S. tasked with executing someone.

Thompson had been appointed to the post of sheriff by the county judge in April of 1936 after the previous sheriff, her husband Everett, died unexpectedly of pneumonia at just 42 years old. 

Thompson would later be elected officially, garnering a whopping 9,811 votes vs. her two opponent’s 2 and 1 votes respectively.  

(Perhaps because of this particular execution, a task she loathed on personal moral grounds, she chose not to seek the position a second time. 

She was, however, subsequently appointed a deputy sheriff by her successor, a position she held for nine years.)

Anticipating the hoopla surrounding a young, condemned black man being led up the gallows to be hung by a white, female sheriff in the South, and the keen interest their

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