Download or read book The Last Execution written by Jesper Wung-Sung and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called “brilliantly devastating” in a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, this award-winning, mesmerizing novel, based on the chilling true story of the last execution in Denmark’s history, asks a question that plagues a small Danish town: does a fifteen-year-old boy deserve to be put to death? On February 22, 1853, a fifteen-year-old Niels Nelson is prepared to be executed on Gallows Hill. The master carpenter comes to measure Niels for his coffin. The master baker bakes bread for the spectators. The messenger posts the notice of execution in the town square. The poet prepares his best pen to record the events as they unfold. A fly, Niels’s only companion in the cell, buzzes. A dog hovers by his young master’s window. A young girl hovers too, pitying the boy. The executioner sharpens his blade. This remarkable, wrenching story is told with the alternating perspectives of eleven different bystanders—one per hour—as the clock ticks ever closer to the moment when the boy must face his fate. Niels Nielson, a young peasant, was sentenced to death by beheading on the dubious charges of arson and murder. Does he have the right to live despite what he is accused of? That is the question the townsfolk ask as the countdown begins. With strong social conscience, piercing intellect, and masterful storytelling, Jesper Wung-Sung explores the age-old question: who determines who has the right to live or die?
Download or read book The Last Execution written by Jesper Wung-Sung and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the true story of the last execution in Denmark's history, this novel asks a question that plagues a small Danish town in 1853: does a fifteen-year-old boy deserve to be put to death?
Download or read book The Last Execution written by Jesper Wung-Sung and published by Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called “brilliantly devastating” in a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, this award-winning, mesmerizing novel, based on the chilling true story of the last execution in Denmark’s history, asks a question that plagues a small Danish town: does a fifteen-year-old boy deserve to be put to death? On February 22, 1853, a fifteen-year-old Niels Nelson is prepared to be executed on Gallows Hill. The master carpenter comes to measure Niels for his coffin. The master baker bakes bread for the spectators. The messenger posts the notice of execution in the town square. The poet prepares his best pen to record the events as they unfold. A fly, Niels’s only companion in the cell, buzzes. A dog hovers by his young master’s window. A young girl hovers too, pitying the boy. The executioner sharpens his blade. This remarkable, wrenching story is told with the alternating perspectives of eleven different bystanders—one per hour—as the clock ticks ever closer to the moment when the boy must face his fate. Niels Nielson, a young peasant, was sentenced to death by beheading on the dubious charges of arson and murder. Does he have the right to live despite what he is accused of? That is the question the townsfolk ask as the countdown begins. With strong social conscience, piercing intellect, and masterful storytelling, Jesper Wung-Sung explores the age-old question: who determines who has the right to live or die?
Download or read book A Hanging in Detroit written by David Gardner Chardavoyne and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first historical study—and a riveting account—of the last execution in Michigan. On September 24, 1830, Stephen G. Simmons, a fifty-year-old tavern keeper and farmer, was hanged in Detroit for murdering his wife, Levana Simmons, in a drunken, jealous rage. Michigan executed only two people during the fifty-year period, from 1796 to 1846, when the death penalty was legal within its boundaries. Simmons was the second and last person to be executed under Michigan law. In A Hanging in DetroitDavid G. Chardavoyne vividly evokes not only the crime, trial, and execution of Simmons, but also the setting and players of the drama, social and legal customs of the times, and the controversy that arose because of the affair. Chardavoyne illuminates his account of this important moment in Michigan's history with many little-known facts, creating a study that is at once an engrossing story and the first historical examination of the event that helped bring about the abolition of the death penalty in Michigan. Simmons execution came at a time when Michigan had begun to change from a sparsely populated wilderness to a thriving agricultural center, and Detroit from a small military outpost to a metropolis founded on trade, manufacturing, and an influx of immigrants and other settlers. The hanging was a defining moment during this period of dramatic social change. Thousands of spectators crowded into Detroit expecting to see a thrilling public execution. Many of those spectators, however, left deeply disturbed by the spectacle they had witnessed. Chardavoyne, a lawyer, probes the unsettling incident which sparked a profound shift in attitudes toward capital punishment in Michigan, examining along the way such mysteries as why Simmons was hanged for his crime when other contemporary killers were hardly punished at all. A Hanging in Detroit will fascinate legal historians and lay readers alike with its incisive look into Great Lakes regional history and crime and punishment in Michigan.
Download or read book Martial Justice written by Richard Whittingham and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Day of a Condemned Man written by Victor Hugo and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829) is a short novel by Victor Hugo. Having witnessed several executions by guillotine as a young man, Hugo devoted himself in his art and political life to opposing the death penalty in France. Praised by Dostoevsky as “absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote,” The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a powerful story from an author who defined nineteenth century French literature. If you knew when and where you would die, how would you spend your final moments? For Hugo’s unnamed narrator, such an existential question is made reality. Sentenced to death for an unspecified crime, he reflects on his life as its last seconds wane in the shadows of a cramped prison cell. Recording his emotional state, observations, and conversations with a priest and fellow prisoner, the condemned man forces us to not only recognize his humanity, but question our own. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
Download or read book The Last Public Execution in America written by Perry Thomas Ryan and published by Perry t Ryan. This book was released on 1992 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 14, 1936, Rainey Bethea was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, before a crowd of 20,000. The public outrage which followed resulted in the complete abolition of public executions in the United States. This site provides the complete text of the book, The Last Public Execution in America.
Download or read book Capital Punishment in Japan written by Petra Schmidt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2002 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.
Download or read book Stay of Execution written by Charles Lane and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-10-16 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published in cooperation with Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, California."--T.p.
Download or read book The Wrong Carlos written by James S. Liebman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, Texas executed Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence, for the murder of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk. His execution passed unnoticed for years until a team of Columbia Law School faculty and students almost accidentally chose to investigate his case and found that DeLuna almost certainly was innocent. They discovered that no one had cared enough about either the defendant or the victim to make sure the real perpetrator was found. Everything that could go wrong in a criminal case did. This book documents DeLunaÕs conviction, which was based on a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification with no corroborating forensic evidence. At his trial, DeLunaÕs defense, that another man named Carlos had committed the crime, was not taken seriously. The lead prosecutor told the jury that the other Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, was a ÒphantomÓ of DeLunaÕs imagination. In upholding the death penalty on appeal, both the state and federal courts concluded the same thing: Carlos Hernandez did not exist. The evidence the Columbia team uncovered reveals that Hernandez not only existed but was well known to the police and prosecutors. He had a long history of violent crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Families of both Carloses mistook photos of each for the other, and HernandezÕs violence continued after DeLuna was put to death. This book and its website (thewrongcarlos.net) reproduce law-enforcement, crime lab, lawyer, court, social service, media, and witness records, as well as court transcripts, photographs, radio traffic, and audio and videotaped interviews, documenting one of the most comprehensive investigations into a criminal case in U.S. history. The result is eye-opening yet may not be unusual. Faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation, and prosecutorial misfeasance continue to put innocent people at risk of execution. The principal investigators conclude with novel suggestions for improving accuracy among the police, prosecutors, forensic scientists, and judges.
Download or read book Last Words of the Executed written by Robert K. Elder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour—and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. Last Words of the Executed presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous—such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown—and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can’t ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. Last Words of the Executed is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Execution written by David R. Dow and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2010-07-17 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, artfully written memoir of a lawyer's life as he races to prevent death row inmates from being executed. Near the beginning of The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow lays his cards on the table. "People think that because I am against the death penalty and don't think people should be executed, that I forgive those people for what they did. Well, it isn't my place to forgive people, and if it were, I probably wouldn't. I'm a judgmental and not very forgiving guy. Just ask my wife." It this spellbinding true crime narrative, Dow takes us inside of prisons, inside the complicated minds of judges, inside execution-administration chambers, into the lives of death row inmates (some shown to be innocent, others not) and even into his own home--where the toll of working on these gnarled and difficult cases is perhaps inevitably paid. He sheds insight onto unexpected phenomena-- how even religious lawyer and justices can evince deep rooted support for putting criminals to death-- and makes palpable the suspense that clings to every word and action when human lives hang in the balance.
Download or read book Surviving Execution written by Ian Woods and published by Atlantic Books (UK). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surviving Execution is the story of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate who has always maintained his innocence, and who did not kill anyone. Convicted largely on the word of the self-confessed killer, who escaped the death penalty in return for implicating Glossip, the state of Oklahoma is still intent on executing him for murder. It is also the story of Ian Woods, a Sky News reporter, who came across the case one quiet afternoon, and who has tirelessly campaigned ever since to bring the injustices Glossip has faced to the world's attention. Three times during 2015, Richard Glossip came within hours of being put to death, postponed each time from last minute stays, and Woods was with him in prison, as a witness to the execution, every time. This is the true story of injustice on death row, written by a man with unparalleled first-hand knowledge, access and understanding of the case. It is a history of execution, an examination of the arguments against it, and a call to end this most barbaric forms of American justice. But first and foremost, it is the tale of the growing friendship between the reporter, and the man he believes to be wrongly convicted of murder.
Download or read book In Cold Blood written by Truman Capote and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.
Download or read book The Hanging and Redemption of John Gordon The True Story of Rhode Island s Last Execution written by Paul F. Caranci and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a frigid day in 1843, Amasa Sprague, a wealthy Yankee mill owner, left his mansion to check on his cattle. On the way, he was accosted and beaten beyond recognition, and his body was left facedown in the snow. What followed was a trial marked by judicial bias, witness perjury and societal bigotry that resulted in the conviction of twenty-nine-year-old Irish-Catholic John Gordon. He was sentenced to hang. Despite overwhelming evidence that the trial was flawed and newly discovered evidence that clearly exonerated him, an anti-Irish Catholic establishment refused him a new trial. On February 14, 1845, John Gordon became the last victim of capital punishment in Rhode Island. Local historian Paul F. Caranci brings this case to life, graphically describing the murder and exposing a corrupt judicial system, a biased newspaper and a bigoted society responsible for the unjust death of an innocent man.
Download or read book The Last Execution written by Jerrie Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To survive, she must put the past behind her. To love, she must learn to trust.Homicide detective Leigh McBride's first assignment with the FBI brings her face-to-face with a past she's tried hard to forget. And when her temporary partner, a cynical ex-marine, lights a fire in her she thought long-extinguished, her darkest secret is threatened.Scarred both physically and emotionally, Special Agent J. T. Noble is a man of few words. He prefers to keep people at a distance-until he meets Leigh. He's attracted to her strength and drawn in by her secrecy. But in their line of work, secrets can be deadly.When the killer they are hunting aims his vigilante justice at Leigh's past assailant, the fine line between right and wrong blurs. To heal the past-and find their future together-Leigh and J. T. must learn that only through trust and forgiveness can love grow.
Download or read book Executing Magic in the Modern Era written by Owen Davies and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lacerated bodies of Roman gladiators were used as a source of curative blood, for instance. In early modern Europe, a great trade opened up in ancient Egyptian mummies and the fat of executed criminals, plundered as medicinal cure-alls. However, this is the first book to consider the demand for the blood of the executed, the desire for human fat, the resort to the hanged man’s hand, and the trade in hanging rope in the modern era. It ends by look at the spiritual afterlife of dead criminals.
