execution
Local Man Sets Record
Submitted by nathan on Sun, 2008-01-20 18:35.January 20, 1927
Los Angeles
A short notice in the paper today about Sidney (or Sydney) Adams who, on August 2, 1925 (most likely) mortally shot his wife Annie in their home at 1234 East Twenty-First Street.
Despite there being a chance for a difference—Adams steadily asserted that the woman committed suicide—on October 12, 1925 it took a Los Angeles jury a record twenty-five minutes to send him to the gallows. (This being in part or wholly dependent on Adams’ race seems obvious—writ large as he’s routinely described as the “giant negro,” a term of which Times seems unusually fond.)
Hangings were on the mind of all Californians as executions ushered in C. C. Young’s gubernatorial regime. The previous four years of Friend Richardson’s governorship were marked by constant rejections of eleventh-hour appeals for executive clemency; in a show of consistency Young had five executions in the first five weeks of his stewardship and saw that each one went through unchallenged.
There were six sitting in San Quentin’s death row when S. C. Stone joined the bunch on January 6, 1927—making it lucky number seven. Adams’ departure today took it back down to six.
If At First You Don't Succeed...
Submitted by joan on Mon, 2007-10-29 08:26.
October 29, 1927
Cuba
Convicted murderer Baldomero Rodrigues was legally executed twice today in the Pinar del Rio prison. The means of execution was the garrote, a macabre relic from the Spanish colonization of Cuba. The prisoner was shackled hand and foot, and then placed in the device which would strangle him to death. At least that was the plan.
Following the initial garroting the supposed dead man was laid on a stretcher to be borne to his grave, when he suddenly sprang to life! With no thought of sparing the resurrected felon, prison officials overpowered the struggling man and forced him once again into the death machine. The strangulation band was adjusted more carefully this time, and Rodrigues remained on the machine for twenty-two minutes before he was officially pronounced dead.
