The Last Public Execution in America
by Perry T. Ryan
CHAPTER 22
PREVIOUS DEATH SENTENCES IN DAVIESS COUNTY
A total of three men have been sentenced to be legally hanged by
judgments of the Daviess Circuit Court, but none have been
electrocuted.
The first public hanging was conducted on November 1, 1854. Curtis
Richardson, who was part Indian, was convicted of murdering William
Lanifer on Christmas Day of 1853. A fight began when Lanifer slapped
Richardson's hat from his head; Richardson then stabbed Lanifer. This
hanging occurred about fifty feet south of what is now the
intersection of Ninth and Breckinridge Streets in Owensboro.
Richardson reportedly had seen a hanging in nearby Hawesville,
Kentucky, and had stated, "I'll die like that someday." When
Richardson was transported to the scaffold, he was taken from the
county jail in the back of a wagon, where he sat on his own coffin.
On February 17, 1905, Roy Green, a seventeen-year-old black man,
was privately hanged for using a plank to beat to death James Coomes,
a native of Webster County. Green also thrust a pointed stick through
his victim's throat and robbed him of some $28.00. This incident
occurred July 31, 1904. Green's arrest was based upon circumstantial
evidence, including Green's presence with the victim on the day of
murder and blood which was washed from his clothes that night. A
manhunt for Green went as far west as Oklahoma. After committing the
murder, Green visited a sister in Evansville for a week and then
traveled to Louisville, where he was arrested. Green confessed to his
crime while he was being transported from Louisville to Owensboro,
stating robbery was his motive. His arraignment was conducted on a
train at Union Station, where he was immediately transported to
Henderson for safekeeping. He was tried on September 1. Ben D. Ringo
was the Commonwealth's Attorney, and he was assisted by County
Attorney LaVega Clements. Green did not take the stand in his
defense. An appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals was denied on
January 13, 1903. The gallows was erected on the north side of the
County Jail, and a wooden fence measuring twenty feet high denied
admittance to the general public. In 1905, the law permitted only
fifty witnesses to be present at a hanging, but it was reported that
several hundred men and women sought a view from the knot holes of
the wooden fence which surrounded the gallows. While on the scaffold,
Green gave a full confession, stating, "Mind what your mothers tell
you and leave whiskey out. Don't do as I have done." He was
pronounced dead by Dr. S. S. Watkins and Dr. William Little. Although
the Court of Appeals rendered an unpublished opinion in this case, it
can be found at Green v. Commonwealth, 26 Ky.Law.Rep. 1221, 83 S.W.
638 (1904).
The third hanging, also conducted privately, was that of Robert
Mathley, a white man who was convicted of shooting to death a
pregnant seventeen-year-old girl, Emma Watkins, with whom he had been
in love. Watkins was carrying Mathley's own child. On the night of
the murder, Mathley asked Watkins to marry him. When she declined, he
left her home but later returned and shot her as well as her
new-found boyfriend, James Gregson. The two victims were sitting in
the kitchen of her home on Cherry Street on June 26, 1904. Mathley
entered the home and shot the Watkins girl, who died momentarily, and
he then turned the gun on Gregson, who died two days later at a
hospital. Mathley remained in the house and was arrested by police
soon after the shooting. He pled guilty at his trial, which lasted
four days. As in the Green case, Ben D. Ringo was the Commonwealth's
Attorney and he was assisted by County Attorney LaVega Clements. The
jury retired for one hour and sentenced him to death. Mathley
appealed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, and that court affirmed
his conviction on April 26, 1905. This hanging took place on July 7,
1905, at 4:40 a.m. The scaffold previously used at the Green hanging
was rebuilt. Again, admission by the general public was not
permitted, but several individuals climbed onto roofs to look down
into the enclosure. When Deputy Sheriff James Jones sprang the trap
door, the rope stretched and the feet of tall six-foot Mathley
touched the ground. Officers quickly dug a hole in the earth so that
his feet would not touch. As with the hanging of Robert Green the
previous year, Dr. Watkins and Dr. Little pronounced the man dead.
The Court of Appeals case can be found at Mathley v. Commonwealth,
120 Ky. 389, 86 S.W. 988 (1905).
In 1910, the Kentucky General Assembly changed the method of
capital punishment in Kentucky to electrocution, and the first man to
be electrocuted at Eddyville died July 8, 1911. However, in the
history of the Daviess County, no person has ever died by
electrocution as the result of a conviction in the Daviess Circuit
Court.
The hanging of Rainey Bethea, conducted on August 14, 1936, for
the June 7, 1936, rape of Mrs. Lischia Edwards was thus the fourth
and last death sentence to be ordered by the Daviess Circuit Court.
Although other private hangings were conducted afterward, it was the
last public execution in America