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