Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (26 page)

After judgement had been passed on him and he was transferred to the condemned cell, his nerve broke; pacing up and down he constantly bewailed his fate and proclaimed his innocence. He made abortive attempts at escaping, all frustrated by his vigilant jailers. It was transparently obvious that on execution day, 2 January 1840, James Foxen, the hangman, and his assistant Thomas Cheshire, known with derisive affection to the scaffold crowd as Old Cheesy, were going to have a lot to contend with – and so it proved.

Pelham’s Chronicles of Crime
, published in 1886, made little effort to conceal the lurid details from the general public:

‘he was escorted from his cell, and at length the procession moved on to the scaffold, where the wretched man mounted the platform at twenty minutes past eight, with a faltering and unsteady step. On the executioner and his assistant now approaching him in such a way as to convince him of their firmness, he became frightfully agitated, and he raised his arms and extended his chest, as if desirous of bursting the bonds which secured him. In the attempt he loosened the bandages around his wrists, and on the cap being drawn over his face, his terror seemed to increase. No sooner had Foxen left him, than he suddenly raised his arms and, by a violent motion, pushed off the cap; and accompanying this act with a motion of the body, he made a strong effort to liberate his neck from the halter.

Two assistant executioners were now called and, having approached the unhappy man, they held him while the cap was again placed over his face and tied there with a handkerchief. The miserable wretch during the whole of this time was struggling with the most determined violence, and the scene excited the strongest expressions of horror among the crowd. Upon his being left again, he advanced from the spot on which he had been placed, until he had got his feet nearly off the drop, and had rested them on the firm part of the platform; and almost at the same time he succeeded in tearing the handkerchief from his eyes.

The outraged feelings of the assembled populace were still to be excited by a more frightful exhibition than any they had yet witnessed; the accustomed signal having been given, the drop sunk; but the wretched man, instead of falling with it, suddenly jumped upon the platform and, seizing the rope around his throat with his hands, which he had sufficiently loosened by the violence of his struggles, he made an effort to prolong that life to which he seemed so strongly attached.

At this moment the spectacle was horrifying in the extreme. The convict was partly suspended, and partly resting on the platform. During his exertions his tongue had been forced from his mouth, and the convulsions of his body and the contortions of his face were truly appalling. The cries from the crowd were of a frightful description, and they continued until Foxen had forced the wretched man’s hand from the rope, and, having roughly removed White’s feet from the platform, had now caused all the man’s weight to be sustained by the rope. The distortions of his countenance could even now be seen by the crowd, and as he remained suspended with his face uncovered, the spectacle was terrific. The hangman at length terminated his sufferings by hanging to his legs, and the unhappy wretch was seen to struggle no more.’

In 1793, on hearing that the practice of transporting felons from Newgate Prison to the Tyburn scaffold through City streets lined with crowds of eager onlookers would cease, the executions thereafter taking place outside the prison itself, the famous writer and lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson exclaimed vehemently, ‘The age is running mad after innovation! They object that the old method drew together a large number of spectators – Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators; if they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?’

John Young

The practice of including the time at which the condemned person should be hanged in Scottish death sentences led to misunderstandings, some victims assuming that their execution, if not completed by the specified time, would not be legal. One such misguided man, John Young of Edinburgh, a sergeant condemned to death in 1750 for passing forged banknotes, was sentenced to die between two and four o’clock, and so he made up his mind to delay matters until after that time when, he believed, he would be reprieved.

When, at two o’clock precisely, the magistrates and officials appeared at his cell door, he made the excuse that he wanted a few minutes alone with the minister. Somehow he persuaded the worthy clergyman to leave the cell for a moment, then he bolted the iron door and refused to open it again. Desperate attempts were made to force an entry and as the time passed towards four o’clock, the magistrates ordered all the clocks in the vicinity to be stopped! Meanwhile the onslaught on the cell continued, success finally being achieved when soldiers smashed their way in through the ceiling from the cell above. Young put up a frenzied resistance and after being knocked unconscious, was dragged headfirst down the stairs and carried out to the scaffold. There, he recovered consciousness and, it then being 4.15, he protested that they could not legally hang him, to which the executioner retorted that they could, even if it were nine o’clock at night! At that he continued his frantic struggles, proclaiming that ‘he would not be an accessory to his own murder’, his vehement objections continuing until the noose tightened relentlessly around his neck.

On 24 May 1725 Jonathan Wild, gangleader par excellence, was taken to Tyburn to be hanged. On the way, true to his principles, he picked the pocket of the chaplain accompanying him. Characteristic of the intemperate habits of Newgate Prison chaplains at that time, the item was a corkscrew, and Wild ‘died with that eloquent trophy in his hand.’

Lethal Injection

James Autry

Even though many executions by this method have been carried out, it still is far from being fault-free. Execution by the firing squad, the rope, even the guillotine, is mainly dependent on the mechanical devices involved, i.e. the rifle, the trapdoor and the release of the blade, but in the lethal injection method difficulties arise in the insertion of tubes into the arm; the patient may not cooperate; there could be phlebitis if the patient has a history of taking drugs or if there have been previous attempts to insert the tubes. So even a method accepted as ‘merciful’ is not necessarily infallible.

In the 1980s, during the early days of lethal injection, teething troubles were bound to be encountered, and this was certainly the case during the execution of James Autry. Drunk, he had entered a store and picked up some cans of beer; on being asked to pay for them, he had produced a gun and shot the female assistant, killing her instantly. On fleeing from the shop he saw two men who might just have witnessed the murder, so he opened fire again, killing one and severely injuring the other. When captured and put on trial he denied all knowledge of the massacre, but the evidence, together with his criminal record, left the court no alternative but to sentence him to death by lethal injection.

On 5 October 1983, after a meal of hamburgers and chips, he was strapped on the trolley, the needles were inserted into his veins, and the first controlled flow, that of saline solution, commenced. Ten minutes or so later, as a result of a legal counter-argument, a stay of execution was granted, and just after midnight he was unstrapped and taken back to his cell. Callous murderer though he was, one cannot even begin to imagine his state of mind at the time, and the suspense of not knowing whether he was going to be executed or not continued for a further five months when, all appeals having been rejected, Autry found himself once again supine on the trolley. Once more the needles were inserted, the chemicals started to flow and the clock ticked away, dismay filling those who witnessed his slow death as fully ten minutes elapsed before the victim finally succumbed to the toxic cocktail.

Roger Gray was the Exeter hangman in the seventeenth century, when the noosed victim had to mount a ladder which was then turned, propelling him or her into eternity. A professional come what may, Roger did not hesitate when his own brother had to be hanged, afterwards writing to his nephew, ‘I am sorry to be the conveyancer of such news unto you as cannot be very welcome. Your father died eight days since, but he was the most generous man I ever saw. I will say this of him everywhere; for I myself trussed him up. He mounted the ladder with good grace, but spying that one of the rungs was broken, and being a lover of good order, he turned to the sheriff and desired it might be mended for the next comer, who perhaps might be less active than himself.’

Peter Morin

Injection difficulties also occurred at Peter Morin’s execution on 13 March 1985. A suspected serial killer, he was also a confirmed drug addict, the result being that, so scarred were his arms and legs, the technician spent forty minutes trying to insert the needles, but in vain – or vein. So although it was reported that the victim took only ten or so minutes to die after the final injection, in actual fact Morin’s execution lasted fifty minutes; surely a barbaric and unacceptable way to dispatch a human being, no matter what his sins.

A victim of the French Revolution, Mme Jeanne Roland had very fine long black hair, and executioner Charles-Henri Sanson explained the need to crop her tresses short, lest they impeded the guillotine blade as it descended. Calmly she allowed him to wield his scissors, interrupting him only to say, ‘At least leave me enough for you to hold my head up and show it to the people, if they wish to see it.’

The Sword

Marquis de Cinq-Mars

This French aristocrat, Henri Coiffier de Ruz, born in 1620, was the son of the Marshal d’Effiat and held the title of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars. Nor was this the only title he possessed, for by the age of nineteen he had been chosen to become equerry to King Louis XIII, his Majesty further favouring him by making him not only Grand Seneschal (steward) of France and Master of the Horse, but the most ostentatious of all, Monsieur le Grand, the King’s confidant. Moreover he was granted the rare privilege of being present while the King discussed high affairs of state with his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu, and was even permitted the liberty of putting his own suggestions forward. Such accolades and royal concessions, together with the power that went with them, went to the young man’s head, magnifying his own importance to the stage where, by 1642, he began to have serious ambitions of actually replacing Richelieu as the King’s personal adviser.

But the wily and experienced Cardinal had intelligence agents in every quarter of the royal court and he acted with ruthless speed; Cinq-Mars and his accomplice, the King’s brother Gaston, Duke of Orléans, had barely started to discuss the means by which they could dispose of Richelieu, before both were arrested and put on trial, the court hearing to take place at Lyons.

What followed was almost unbelievable. The Cardinal, a sick man, was virtually bedridden, but was determined to attend the trial. Because of his condition, travel by carriage was out of the question, and so a portable wooden room was made for him. It was painted all over with gilt, and contained a bed, a table and a chair, while the walls were draped with crimson damask. It was transported on the heads of twenty of his bodyguards, and in much same way as lamp-posts, traffic lights and the like are removed in order to facilitate the passage of a wide load along major roads in this country, so for the Cardinal’s caravan, walls, gateways, even houses, were demolished in order that its progress should not be obstructed or delayed. On reaching the river Rhône, it was transferred to a large barge which, together with another boat containing the two unfortunate prisoners, was then towed by horses to its destination.

The trial began at 7 a.m. and was all over in a matter of hours, the President of the court, Chancellor Sequier, being a personal enemy of Cinq-Mars, decreeing that not only should both traitors be beheaded by the sword, but that as the instigator, Cinq-Mars should be tortured before being taken to where the executioner awaited.

A Jesuit priest, Father Malavette, was appointed to minister to Cinq-Mars, the prisoner then exclaiming to him, ‘
Mon Pére
, they are going to torture me. I can scarcely bring myself to submit to it.’ But the priest’s reply hardly gave the doomed man any consolation. ‘You must submit to the hand of God, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Nothing ever happens except by his permission.’

The victim was then led to the torture chamber and although no details were divulged, it is likely that he suffered in the Boots, perhaps a version in which each leg was encased between boards in the manner of splints, both legs then being bound together. For the
question ordinaire
, that which persuaded the victim to admit his or her guilt, wedges would be driven between the two innermost boards with a mallet; for the
question extraordinaire
, requiring the divulging of the names of any fellow conspirators, four more wedges would be driven between the legs and the outer boards, crushing and eventually shattering the limbs.

Whatever methods were employed, it was reported that he had to be supported by warders on being led from the room.