Centenaries - whole and half

[Ginger]

Theoretically you are right Stan, but in practice any amount of time between the date of conviction and sentencing and the "execution" of the sentence is used for the purposes of trying to get a higher court to review the decision and see if as a matter of law the trial was correctly handled or not.

I do know that (at least) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, hangings would be scheduled with an intervening Sunday, so that the condemned could worship properly.

[Mayerling]

Yes, the week following the killing. I always figured that it would be a greater punishment to make them wait a couple of weeks between the sentencing and the execution - give them some time to think about their end.

Theoretically you are right Stan, but in practice any amount of time between the date of conviction and sentencing and the "execution" of the sentence is used for the purposes of trying to get a higher court to review the decision and see if as a matter of law the trial was correctly handled or not. And usually this extends matters into months, years, and even decades. Which (of course) opens up the issue (with the denouncers of capital punishment) that further actions are cruel and unusual punishment for the length of time involved, or that the right to a speedy trial has been violated.

Jeff

[GUT]

Yes, the week following the killing. I always figured that it would be a greater punishment to make them wait a couple of weeks between the sentencing and the execution - give them some time to think about their end.

Now a days it seems that about 10 years is the norm in the good old US of A, and indeed Indonesia.

[sdreid]

Maybe I misread I thought t was hanged a week after the trial, but on a 2nd read a week after the killing.

Yes, the week following the killing. I always figured that it would be a greater punishment to make them wait a couple of weeks between the sentencing and the execution - give them some time to think about their end.

[GUT]

Gee they waited a whole week, sometimes it was the same day.

Maybe I misread I thought t was hanged a week after the trial, but on a 2nd read a week after the killing.

[GUT]

150 years ago - 1865 June 8 - In a Montana Territory saloon, Harry Slater is gunned down by John Keene, a rival. Keene was arrested for the killing and ready admitted to it. He was speedily tried and hanged the week after the incident.

Gee they waited a whole week, sometimes it was the same day.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1865 June 8 - In a Montana Territory saloon, Harry Slater is gunned down by John Keene, a rival. Keene was arrested for the killing and ready admitted to it. He was speedily tried and hanged the week after the incident.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 June 2 - While on cruiser patrol in Washington Parish, Louisiana, Deputies O'Neal Moore and David Rogers receive a hail of bullets from a passing truck. Moore was killed instantly and Rogers lost an eye in the incident. Both men were among the first black peace officers in the area and the Klan was suspected but no murder charges were ever brought in the case.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 May 25 - In (then West) Germany, Ernst Dieter-Beck strangles a 29-year-old woman he'd met at a dance club. Ursula Fritz was the second murder by the serial killer. After a third slaying in 1968, he was sent to prison for life.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 May 17 - Jean Welch, 33, is found murdered in the Maryland apartment she shares with her husband. She had been beaten with an unknown instrument and strangled then drowned in a tub of water. The attacker's motive was suspected as being an attempted sexual assault. Mrs. Welch's two little daughters were present but not harmed. This murder is still unsolved.

[Mayerling]

Today, May 11, 2015 was the two hundred and third anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in the old House of Commons by John Bellingham, a ruined merchant who felt the British government failed to sustain his claims against the Tsarist Government in Russia leading to his being ruined. I was reading the Wikipedia article about Perceval, and noted two interesting points.

The current House of Commons did not put up a plaque in honor of the approximate spot of the shooting until the last couple of years.

A collateral descendant of the assassin, Henry Bellingham, is a Tory M.P. in Parliament today.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

150 years ago - 1865 May 10 - Confederate guerilla fighter William Quantrill is shot in an ambush by U.S. Army troops in Kentucky. He was hit in the back and paralyzed from the chest down. Quantrill lingered for a few weeks then died of the wound.

Quantrill had left Missouri in late February headed to Washington, D.C. His intention was to kill Abraham Lincoln. On the way he committed various thefts and murders for himself and his small band. Some of these were against Union troops, but he willingly did the same against civilians. In April he had reached Kentucky when he heard of Lincoln's Assassination by John Wilkes Booth. He decided to return to Missouri, but was caught by the Union troops and mortally wounded.

PLEASE NOTE: Although technically a war atrocity (though in it's day it was considered murder on the high seas by people like Theodore Roosevelt), today is the 100th Anniversary of the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, by U-Boot 20 under command of Kapitan Walter Schweiger. The submarine is recorded as having fired only a single torpedo, but there appears to have been a second internal explosion. Whether due to boilers, to a cargo including some ammunition, or to coal dust that caught fire from the torpedo detonation, the "Lusitania" sank within 18 minutes, and with the loss of between 1,198 and 1,201 men, women, and children (only four children survived out of 39). One hundred and fourteen Americans were among the dead, including millionaire Alfred Guynne Vanderbilt, Broadway producer Charles Frohman, novelist and dramatist Justin Miles Forman, librettist (for Sousa's "El Capitan") and dramatist Charles Klein, and Marie de Page (wife of the U.S. ambassador to Belgium). The Anglo-Irish art collector, Sir Hugh Lane, also died in the disaster. Captain William Turner of the "Lusitania" survived. Schweiger would rise as the Imperial German Navy's sixth highest submarine ace (in terms of sinking allied tonnage) until his death in 1917 when his then command hit a mine and sank with no survivors.

Jeff

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1865 May 10 - Confederate guerilla fighter William Quantrill is shot in an ambush by U.S. Army troops in Kentucky. He was hit in the back and paralyzed from the chest down. Quantrill lingered for a few weeks then died of the wound.

[GUT]

G'Day GUT,

Fair enough. By the way, since I mentioned a spoof by Stephen Leacock on Sherlock Holmes and Watson on another thread just now, let me remind all good Sherlockians yesterday was the 124th anniversary of the fight at the Reichenbach Falls between Holmes and Professor Moriarty.

Jeff

G'day Jeff

Fair Dinkum?

Couldn't resist

[Mayerling]

May 5 is also the anniversary of "Fair Dinkum" appearing in print fot the frst time in the Bulletin. Just thought since we were on Australia I'd throw that one in.

G'Day GUT,

Fair enough. By the way, since I mentioned a spoof by Stephen Leacock on Sherlock Holmes and Watson on another thread just now, let me remind all good Sherlockians yesterday was the 124th anniversary of the fight at the Reichenbach Falls between Holmes and Professor Moriarty.

Jeff