The majesty of the law was perfectly sustained. There wasn’t a hitch anywhere and not an incident which could merit the faintest criticism. Czolgosz was sentenced to die in the electric chair, and his death was effected quickly and certainly. It was but an incredibly short time after the murderer walked into the death chamber when the doctors in attendance pronounced him dead. There had been no scene; no one had fainted or grown excited. Everyone conducted himself with remarkable sang-froid. The attendants were busy right up to the moment of turning on the current, and had but stepped back when the body of the assassin was in the grasp of the powerful current. As I have said, not a thing marred the formality. Everything went off smoothly.
Sheriff Samuel Caldwell agreed, saying:
I was impressed with the idea that the assassin was a man of great nerve. Although guards had hold of his arms, the prisoner could have walked unaided to the chair. Aside from the prisoner’s last words, there was not a sound in the death chamber, and the prisoner himself gave no evidence of fear.
As soon as he had been seated in the chair and his face covered so that his nose and month were alone exposed, Warden Mead raised his hand and Electrician Davis turned on the current which snuffed out the prisoner’s life as with a snap of the finger. The electrician then felt the prisoner’s jugular vein. Dr. MacDonald did the same, and was followed by Prison Physician Gerin. The doctors then stepped back, and Warden Mead again raised his hand. Again the current was applied and was continued about 50 seconds.
When the electricity was again shut off, the physicians examined the body by the usual means, and at the end pronounced that the man was dead. The prisoner’s nerve was evidenced by his conduct from the moment he entered the death chamber. No groan escaped him, and his lips did not even move except when he was making his final statement to the effect that he did not repent his crime. When the electricity entered the assassin’s body it stiffened with successive jerks, but death was so quick that he did not have time to groan.
Czolgosz’s last words were an expression of regret that he would not meet his father again and a defiant declaration, “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people—the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”
After the execution the prison authorities refused to release the body to the family. Instead it was placed in a plain wooden coffin, which was then filled with sulfuric acid. The remains were dissolved within hours. There would be no body for the anarchist movement to create a martyr.
THE CHAIR TRAVELS OLD SPARKY IN THE PHILIPPINES
Execution methods become associated with different countries and different cultures. The guillotine is as French as a beret or a burgundy, the garrote as Spanish as paella. Stoning is indelibly associated with the Middle East, and the electric chair with the United States. In fact, the electric chair, despite seeming to be a high tech and modern solution to the execution problem, has been taken up by no other countries.
Every single country in the world decided the chair was not for them. The closest it came to traveling was during the war when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested that once Hitler was captured and tried, he would be executed on an electric chair in Trafalgar Square, London. He may well have been joking.
The Philippines were the only country outside of the United States that decided to give the chair a try, and the only reason they did was that they were under American control at the time. A while after the United States pulled out, they unplugged the chair.
Capital punishment has been a controversial topic in the Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic country. Many oppose it. The country was ruled by the Spanish until 1898. Under colonial rule, firing squad, garrote, and hanging were the methods of choice. This remained the case in the early years of American rule. But in 1926, the US authorities introduced the electric chair. It was used for a number of years but when the government changed to a commonwealth in 1935 executions were suspended.
In 1946 the Philippines became a sovereign independent state and executions resumed. Rape, murder, and treason were capital offenses. Political assassinations were common and many of the executions were political. Fifty-one people were electrocuted in fifteen years. Once President Ferdinand Marcos came to power, the number of electrocutions rose sharply. Ironically Marcos had been sentenced to death himself in 1938, but was acquitted on appeal.
The electric chair was used until 1976, when it was replaced by firing squad. In 1986, the Philippines introduced a new constitution which made it the first Asian country to drop capital punishment. It was briefly reintroduced in the nineties, but on April 15, 2006, the sentences of 1,230 death row prisoners were commuted to life imprisonment. The death penalty is no longer part of the Philippines justice system.
During the years of the electric chair, the most famous case was the trial of three men accused of the brutal gang rape of a popular actress. Maggie dela Riva was born in 1942 and appeared in over thirty films. She still works in television. She graduated high school at sixteen and trained as a secretary, but then she began getting work as an actress. In addition to her movies, she also became a regular feature on ABS-CBN, the main commercial radio and television station in the Philippines. This work made her a household name and by the time she was twenty-five, everyone in the country knew her face. It was 1967 and she was on every television screen. A group of rich kids used to prowl the posh hotels in Pasay City, a suburb of Manila. Pasay is a well-off section of the capital, famous for its entertainment and its restaurants. The nightlife there is second to none and it is a tourist magnet. The group used to prowl the streets and the hotels, drinking and looking for women. Some of the members—a sort of Philippine Rat Pack—were well known, including Jaime Jose Y Gomez. He came from a wealthy and politically well-connected family and was well known in his own right as a band leader.
In the small hours of June 26, 1967, Maggie dela Riva was on her way home from the television studio. She was accompanied by her maid, Helen Calderon. They drove down 12th Street in the Quezon district and were very close to home. Just then, four men in a convertible drove up behind them and came abreast of dela Riva’s car. They tried to bump her from the side and she had to break sharply to avoid a collision, and then she hit the gas and tried to pull to the left to evade them. She was right outside her own house. The other car tried to bump her again, and dela Riva swore at the driver. Then he got out and rushed towards her. In panic, she began blaring the horn of her car. He grabbed her and pulled her from the car. His three companions each reached out and pulled her by the legs and neck into the convertible, and then they took off, leaving the maid behind.
The four men in the convertible were Jose Y Gomez, Basilio Pineda Jr., Eduardo Aquino Y Payumo, and Rogelio Canal Y Sevilla. They swiftly drove to the Swanky Hotel in Pasay. The hotel staff knew what was going on and turned a blind eye as the terrified woman was dragged in.
The men led dela Riva up to the second floor where they had a room. Dela Riva was forced to sit on the bed, surrounded by Jose and Canal. Aquino and Pineda stood in front of her. Pineda ordered her to do a striptease for them. Once the actress was completely naked, Jose stripped and pushed her backwards onto the bed. He then raped her. She struggled violently and he struck her several times to subdue her. After that, the others took their turns. Twice during the rape she passed out, which took from their enjoyment. So they paused to throw water over her face and slapped her to revive her. During the ordeal, they also threatened to shoot her and to throw acid in her face. They also threatened to seek her out and disfigure her if she spoke to police afterward.
At six o’clock in the morning, after an hour of rape and torture, they were finished with her. They took her out onto the street and put her in a taxi, then walked away, laughing.
When she got home, the shocked actress was confronted by a large crowd, including police officers and reporters. Her maid had raised the alarm. She fell into her mother’s arms and sobbed, “Mommy, mommy, I have b
een raped. All four of them raped me.”
The trial took place at the end of September, and dela Riva bravely stood on the witness stand to deliver her damning testimony. Pineda pleaded guilty. The other three denied the rape. But all were found guilty on October 2, and were sentenced to death. Four hotel employees who aided the rapists were given lesser sentences.
Canal did not live long enough to face the electric chair. While on death row he overdosed on drugs and passed away in 1970. The other three were electrocuted in 1972. Because of the celebrity status of the victim, it was one of the most notorious trials in Philippine history and attracted huge interest. President Marcos ordered that the executions be televised.
The three men went to the chair on May 17, 1972. The Manila Times wrote that the three men were given a mild sedative to help them through the final day. Then they were transferred from the prison hospital to the anteroom of the death chamber at midnight. Weeping relatives were allowed spend the final few hours with the men.
At seven o’clock in the morning, the official death sentence was read out, and then the men got their final breakfast: fried chicken, bread, and coffee. Lunch was their last meal and consisted of chicken, lobsters, and ice cream, along with side dishes. Pineda and Aquino ate. But Jose could not, even when his sister tried to spoon feed him.
At three o’clock that afternoon, silence descended on the prison. The paper noted: “A pale and dazed Jose was the first to walk the final steps to the execution chamber. He had just recovered from shock and had to be placed under sedation. His eyes stared blankly and unseeing as he walked between two priests with lips repeating their prayers.”
The execution did not go well. Witness Basil Caranting wrote: “Three guards pulled down three switches, of which only one is the live switch. Everybody in that chamber witnessed how a human body contorts when 2,000 volts of electricity is coursed through it. There was a smell of burning flesh. When the initial shock was over, the duty doctor approached the chair and examined the body. He shook his head and in a loud voice proclaimed: ‘Sir, the condemned man is still alive.’”
A second jolt was needed.
Then it was Pineda’s turn.
The Manila Times wrote: “Pineda came next. He had a minor hassle with prison guards when, owing to a slight confusion, they started to lead Aquino to the death chamber ahead of him. He was strapped into the chair at 3:40 p.m., and pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. Aquino came last. He died at 4:10 p.m. While he was in the death chamber, his mother, who had been keeping him company since morning, fainted into the arms of her eight other children.”
The very public nature of the executions made a deep impression across the country. Dean Jorge Bocobo, a Filipino journalist, wrote: “As a young man my family lived just blocks away from the Swanky Hotel in Pasay City where the incident took place. I remember vividly the newspaper pictures of those men with shaven heads just before they were fried from brain to balls in the electric chair. For many of my generation, that seared in our young minds forever this message: Rape is Evil! The victory of justice in this case was self-evident in the grace, bravery and enduring humanity that lives in Maggie dela Riva.”
14
REFINING THE DEATH PENALTY
Once the Furman objections had been overcome by the Gregg decision in 1976, the majority of states reintroduced the death penalty. The execution of Gary Gilmore opened the floodgates and many more executions were scheduled. Death row began to fill up in many prisons. But in the wake of the Gregg decision, several other landmark cases were heard which limited and defined how America would practice the death penalty. In this chapter we will look at the main decisions and how they affected capital punishment.
At one time, several crimes were punishable by death, including rape, aggravated larceny, treason, kidnapping, and, of course, murder. But as standards of decency evolved, it became difficult to justify the death penalty in all such cases. Over the years since 1976, America has evolved its thinking on capital punishment in several important aspects so that now only certain classes of murder draw down the ultimate sanction.
IS RAPE A DEATH PENALTY OFFENSE?
In 1977, just a year after the reintroduction of the death penalty, the Supreme Court decided that it was against the Eighth Amendment to execute people for rape. The landmark decision was handed down in Coker v. Georgia.
Ehrlich Anthony Coker was bad to the bone. He was a career criminal with a propensity for extreme violence and ended up serving a lengthy sentence for rape, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and first-degree murder. This had not resulted in the death sentence because his case was heard during the moratorium. Instead he got three life sentences, two twenty-year sentences, and an eight-year sentence. He had raped and killed a sixteen-year-old, and raped and badly injured another sixteen-year-old. But eighteen months into his sentence, he managed to escape from Wade Correctional Institute in Georgia. While he was on the run, he broke into the home of newlyweds, Allen and Elnita Carver, near Waycross, Georgia. He tied Allen up in the bathroom and then raped sixteen-year-old Elnita before bundling her into the couple’s car, which he then stole. He was arrested in the stolen car with his terrified victim tied up beside him. Rape was a capital offense and after his conviction the jury sentenced him to die in the electric chair during the sentencing portion of the hearing. They did this because of the presence of aggravating factors. He had previous convictions for a capital offense (first-degree murder), and the rape was committed during the course of another capital felony—an armed robbery. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the sentence. Then the defense attorneys brought their appeal to the US Supreme Court.
In the plurality opinion (a sort of average opinion handed down by a divided court) written by Justice Byron White, he noted that rape in itself does not cause serious injury, writing: “Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape by definition does not include the death of or even the serious injury to another person.”
The court also considered legal practice at the time. In 1925 only eighteen states had allowed the death penalty for rape, and by 1971 this number had dropped to sixteen—less than half of the states that allowed executions. But post-Furman, only one state retained rape of an adult woman as a capital offense—Georgia. Of the sixty-three rape cases in Georgia considered by the Supreme Court, they found only six of those involved a death sentence, and only five of those death sentences were upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court. So the US Supreme Court concluded that death sentences were rare in rape cases—an unusual punishment.
They acknowledged the seriousness of rape, but added, “In terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life.” For that reason, the Court concluded that the electric chair was excessive punishment for “the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.” The aggravating factors considered by the jury did not change this. The death sentences against Coker and four other rapists sentenced to the chair (John Hooks, John Eberheart, Donald Boyer, and William Hughes) were commuted to life imprisonment.
The death penalty for the rape of an adult was no longer constitutional. However two states—Mississippi and Florida—retained the death penalty for the rape of a child. The main consequence of the Coker decision was that the death penalty was largely restricted to crimes in which someone had been killed.
As for Ehrlich Coker, he is still behind bars at the Philips State Prison in Georgia, after serving the first thirty-seven years of multiple life terms. Interestingly, his son Eric Lee Coker is also doing time in North Carolina. He was sentenced to a minimum of twenty-one years for repeatedly molesting a fourteen-year-old relative and for trying to hire a hit man to take out his wife.
In later years, the Supreme Court revisited the question of rape when the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana came before it. Patrick O’Neal Kennedy, from greater New Orleans, was a huge 300 pound man who violently raped his eight-year-old stepdaughter,
causing her extensive internal injuries. He was offered a deal to plead guilty and avoid the death penalty in 2003, but refused. On conviction he was sentenced to death, a decision upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
The US Supreme Court ruled, in 2008, that the death penalty was not constitutional for the rape of a minor. Thus the death penalty is now unconstitutional in all cases that do not involve murder or crimes against the state (espionage and treason).
FELONY MURDER
Felony murder is a special class of murder. If a defendant accidentally kills someone in the course of a felony, he can be charged with murder. Or if he is involved with others in a felony and someone else in the criminal enterprise commits murder then all those involved can be charged with murder, even if they had nothing to do with the killing and did not approve it. So, if you are the lookout in an armed robbery and someone gets killed inside while you are outside and well away from the crime, you are still guilty of murder. Not every state recognizes felony murder, but in those that do, it can be a capital offense. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court in two key rulings. The decision in Enmund v. Florida was that the death penalty could not be imposed on someone who did not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill. But in Tison v. Arizona, the court decided that the death penalty could be imposed on someone who was a major participant in a felony and acted with reckless indifference to human life.
In other words, executing someone for felony murder is constitutional, but each case has to be carefully considered on its merits.
Earl Enmund was a getaway driver in an armed robbery of a couple in rural Florida. His accomplices, Sampson and Jeanette Armstrong, rang the doorbell of the farmhouse of Thomas and Eunice Kersey. When Thomas opened the door, they held him at gunpoint, but Eunice came out with a gun and wounded Jeanette. Then Sampson shot back, killing the couple. Both Armstrongs were sentenced to death and so was their getaway driver, Enmund. While the sentences of the Armstrongs were upheld, that of Enmund was commuted to life imprisonment after the Supreme Court ruled that he had not participated in the killing and had not agreed to the killing taking place.
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