The Last Public Execution in America

by Perry T. Ryan

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CHAPTER 1

THE BACKGROUND

Owensboro is the County Seat of Daviess County, which borders the Ohio River in the northwest of Kentucky. According to the 1930 United States Census, the population of Daviess County was 43,779. There were 3,480 blacks, constituting about 8 percent of the total population. The residence of blacks was not evenly distributed across the county. Most lived in Owensboro, which contained 2,509 blacks, some 72 percent of the total blacks in the county.

While the total population of Daviess County had remained relatively constant for the thirty years preceding the Bethea trial, the proportional population of blacks noticeably decreased over the same time. In 1920, the population of the county was 40,733, of whom 4,533, or 11.1 percent, were black. In 1910, the population of the county was 41,020, of whom 5,195, or 12.6 percent, were black.

In order to understand the events which led to the Rainey Bethea execution, it is important to examine how local and national events shaped things for the people of Daviess County.

The Civil War ended in 1865, and from that moment forward, all black slaves became free men. However, even after the era of Reconstruction in the South, the struggle to obtain equality of all races under the law was hard fought. Even by the 1920's and 1930's, blacks were not really equal to whites under the law. Racial segregation was commonly required by law in schools, busses, and in public facilities, such as restaurants and restrooms.

The stock market crashed in November of 1929, thus marking the beginning of the Great Depression, the most serious blemish upon the history of capitalism. Thousands of men, the "breadwinners" of the 1930's, were without work, but the urban areas were worse stricken than the rural areas, since people who lived on farms were often better equipped to feed and clothe themselves. Blacks had a particularly difficult time finding even modest jobs, since whites had priority in much of the hiring regardless of economic conditions.

Prohibition, the complete national proscription of the sale or possession of alcoholic beverages, became law on the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1919 and continued until the repeal of the amendment in 1933. While intended to reduce legal wrongdoing, Prohibition actually fostered a new form of lawlessness known as organized crime. In New York, Chicago, and other large American cities, gangsters formed the first mafia organizations, which were known for their cleverness in obtaining alcoholic beverages despite the law; however, illegally selling alcohol was the least of the crimes committed by the gangsters. Various newspapers reported the murders, kidnapping, robberies, and other criminal activities that these groups engineered. Law and order appeared to many American citizens to be a thing of the past.

J. Edgar Hoover assumed the directorship of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1924. At the age of twenty-nine, Hoover was a daring and ambitious law enforcement officer. Partly to deter crime and partly to satisfy his own ego, Hoover made sure that the press was present every time the F.B.I. made a "bust." The sensational reports of these arrests contributed to the idea that America had forsaken law and order, even though part of Hoover's purpose was to reassure the public that crime was under control.

Americans also read about the brutal abduction of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., the twenty-month-old son of the heroic American aviator, famed for making the first nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. The kidnapper gained entry to the Lindberghs' New Jersey residence by placing a ladder to a second floor window on March 1, 1932 and ruthlessly left a note demanding $50,000 for the child's safe return. Although the Lindberghs paid the ransom money, Americans were horrified when they later read that the merciless kidnapper had killed the baby and that the partly decomposed body had been left in a forest not far from the Lindbergh residence. Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant, was eventually arrested and charged with the crime. The police searched his garage and found most of the ransom money. Additional evidence made the case against Hauptmann overwhelming. After being tried and convicted, he was electrocuted on April 3, 1936, at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.

Finally, Americans read of the September 8, 1935, shooting of United States Senator Huey Long, a former governor of Louisiana and a controversial figure in the Democratic Party. Some called him the dictator of Louisiana. Coining the expression, "Every man a king," he offered renewed hope for many who cherished the American Dream. He preached that all workers should be paid a decent wage. To others, Long represented a serious threat to the status quo, and he made enemies everywhere. Becoming an enemy of Huey Long could be a serious mistake, since Long's vindictive, retaliatory methods often resulted in the deliberate ruin of political careers. Long, who had been a candidate for President of the United States, was known for his politically corrupt practices, even though thousands of followers believed him to be the savior of the Democratic Party. The official account of his death was that he was assassinated in the halls of the Louisiana State Capitol by a physician, Dr. Carl A. Weiss, the son-in-law of Judge B. H. Pavy, who was a political enemy of Long. Weiss was immediately shot to death by Long's bodyguards. Long died two days later, but suspicions arose as to whether Dr. Weiss had really shot Long or whether the bodyguards themselves were guilty of the crime. Even today, there are serious questions of deceit surrounding the Long assassination. No one really knows who shot Huey Long. Many Americans believed that lawlessness was about to prevail in the United States.

Many individuals believed that only the severest of punishments could dissuade some of the criminal behaviors which they read about in the newspapers. Consequently, capital punishment became commonplace in most states. Between 1910 and 1928, Kentucky gradually increased the number of death sentences it implemented per year.

Those who remember Daviess County as it was in 1936 state that many citizens believed it was time to "get tough" with criminals. The summer of 1936 was one of the hottest summers on record, with temperatures recorded as high as 107 degrees. With such discomfort, people were easily agitated.

A sort of "cowboy" approach pervaded justice in 1936, and when someone got too far out of line, he would be dealt with severely. It should have been no surprise to a man charged with crimes that he would receive a harsh sentence for his misdeeds. Blacks were particularly at risk, since many people believed that they were "troublemakers," by nature. Whites often found it difficult to understand blacks, and a generalized fear of black people pervaded the relations between the two races. Fear of the dark race no doubt has caused much of the brutality which was meted out to blacks in the criminal justice system. With the Civil War seventy-one years behind them, racism was the rule, not the exception.

In Kentucky, the death penalty had always been an available punishment for rape, but the wording of Section 1154 of the Kentucky Statutes made the law unusual because the maximum term of imprisonment available was twenty years, even though the death penalty could be utilized.

Whoever shall unlawfully carnally know a female, of and above twelve years of age, against her will or consent, or by force, whilst she is insensible, shall be guilty of rape, and punished by confinement in the penitentiary not less than ten nor more than twenty years or by death, in the discretion of the jury.

Strangely, the statute failed to allow for life imprisonment or for jail time of more than twenty years. While the statute was not patently racist, in truth, the sentence of ten to twenty years imprisonment was more frequently imposed upon white defendants, while the death sentence was more likely to be imposed upon blacks. Of the five men electrocuted for rape between 1911 and 1920, four were black.

In 1910, the Kentucky General Assembly enacted Section 1137 of the Kentucky Statutes, which provided that all death sentences would thereafter be implemented by electrocution. The first prisoner to be electrocuted in Kentucky was Jim Buckner, a black man who had been convicted of murder in Marion County. Buckner died at Eddyville on July 8, 1911. In the ten years from the time electrocution was first instituted in 1910 until 1920, when a new rape law took effect, a total of thirty-two prisoners had been electrocuted at Eddyville; five of these were for rape, while twenty-seven were for murder.

In 1920, Will Lockett, a black man, raped a nine-year-old white girl who lived in Lexington. Although Lockett was convicted and sentenced to die by electrocution, many Kentuckians, especially those living in Lexington, believed the sentence was too lenient. The public outrage at this crime prompted the Kentucky General Assembly to amend the 1910 death penalty statute whereby juries had the option of sentencing a rapist to hang in the county seat. The new rape statute, even more peculiar than its predecessor, still permitted a penalty of from ten to twenty years imprisonment, or death, in the discretion of the jury. Will Lockett was electrocuted on March 11, 1920, and the same year, the Kentucky General Assembly amended Section 1137 by adding at the end of the law the following two sentences:

Except in cases where the accused has been adjudged to suffer a death sentence for the crime of rape or attempted rape, in which event sentence shall be executed by hanging the condemned in the county in which the crime was committed. The sentence shall be executed by the sheriff of the county.

This law took effect although the Governor of Kentucky neither approved nor disapproved of the bill. Interestingly, the new law did not specify whether the sentence of hanging should be implemented publicly or privately, just that it had to be done in the county seat where the crime was committed. Some judges surmised that the legislature had intended the hangings to be public, while others ordered the hangings to be carried out privately. Following the enactment of this law, nine men were hanged for the crime of rape, eight of which involved blacks who raped white women. The only hanging of a white man, that of Willie DeBoe, was imposed after he raped a pregnant white woman.

The first two, Ray Ross and Ed Harris, were hanged in Lexington. Perhaps the citizens of Lexington, whose outrage at the crime committed by Will Lockett prompted the new law, were anxious to see it take effect. On April 3, 1924, Ray Ross, a twenty-five-year-old black man, raped nine-year-old Willie May Young in Lexington. He was tried on October 16, 1924, and sentenced to die. The execution took place in Lexington on August 28, 1925, but was conducted privately. The Fayette Circuit Court Judge ordered that the hanging take place in an enclosure and limited admittance to 100 persons. Ed Harris raped and murdered thirty-year-old Mrs. Margaret Bryant on January 19, 1926, at a Lexington horse farm. Harris was convicted on February 2, 1926, and was hanged privately on March 5, 1926.

Although the first two hangings were conducted privately, the third and fourth hangings, those of Bunyan Fleming and Nathan Bard in Madisonville, provided the first public spectacle. On the evening of April 7, 1926, Bunyan Fleming and Nathan Bard brutally raped Nell C. Breithaupt, in Hopkins County. They were tried in two separate trials and sentenced to die. Fleming was convicted on April 27, 1927, and Bard was convicted on April 28, 1927. On November 25, 1927, the two were publicly hanged in Madisonville, in the order in which the jury had convicted them, Fleming first, then Bard.

The fifth hanging under the 1920 rape law, that of Sam Jennings, was publicly conducted on June 17, 1932, in Hardinsburg, for the rape of twenty-three-year-old Mabel Downs. The rape occurred on October 6, 1930, and Jennings was convicted, less than three weeks later, on October 24, 1930. The evidence used to convict Sam Jennings was suspect. At one point in the trial, a defense attorney asked Mabel Downs, "Do you understand that when a man assaults you and throws you down on the ground he has committed rape?" Mabel Downs replied, "I suppose so; that is what I understood." A physician's examination of the victim produced little evidence of injury, but the young Mabel Downs positively identified Jennings as her assailant.

The sixth hanging was that of Willard T. DeBoe, the only white man to be hanged under the rape law. DeBoe was convicted of raping a pregnant woman, thirty-two-year-old Mrs. Marjorie Johnson. He was convicted on July 19, 1934, and was hanged in the tiny community of Smithland on April 19, 1935. Although the general public was not permitted to witness the DeBoe hanging, some 1,500 people were present.

Rainey Bethea was the seventh person to be hanged under the rape law. The sentence was carried out on August 14, 1936. Interestingly, Bethea was the last person to be publicly executed in America, but the press coverage portrayed these hangings, particularly the Bethea hanging, as carnival-like events, both disgraceful and uncivilized. The press attention was of such magnitude that the last two hangings in Kentucky, of John Montjoy and Harold Van Venison in Covington, were conducted privately.

John "Peter" Montjoy, age twenty-three, was privately hanged in Covington on December 17, 1937, having been convicted of raping twenty-seven-year-old Mrs. Irene Cummings. The rape occurred on March 22, 1935, and Montjoy was convicted by a jury on April 17, 1935.

On January 17, 1938, Kentucky Senator William R. Attkisson of the 38th Senatorial District in Louisville, introduced Senate Bill 69, calling for the repeal the requirement from Section 1137 that death sentences for the crime of rape be conducted by hanging in the county seat where the crime was committed. Representative Charles W. Anderson, Jr., one of four black attorneys who undertook Bethea's case in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, promoted the bill in the House of Representatives. After both houses approved the bill on March 12, 1938, Governor Albert B. "Happy" Chandler signed it into law, and it became effective on May 30, 1938. Chandler later expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, "Our streets are no longer safe."

The last person to be legally hanged in Kentucky was Harold Van Venison, a thirty-three-year-old black singer. Van Venison was hanged on June 3, 1938, after the rape law had actually been repealed. Governor Chandler signed no death warrant in this case, and, for this reason, the hanging was conducted in violation of Section 297 of the Kentucky Code of Criminal Practice. Before the hanging, a legal question arose as to whether Van Venison should hang or be electrocuted, since the rape law requiring hanging had been repealed effective May 30, 1938. Attorney General Hubert Meredith was of the opinion that since the offense as well as the conviction had occurred prior to the repeal date, Van Venison should hang, since Section 1137-10 of the Kentucky Statutes stated that the penalty to be imposed would be the penalty available and in effect at the time the offense was committed. Thus, the Van Venison hanging was the last legal hanging in Kentucky, though conducted privately.

Since that time, the gallows in Kentucky has belonged to history.