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 abolit

The inspiration behind "A Lesson Before Dying" meets the best of John Grisham as a young Cajun lawyer fights to save a black teenager from the electric chair. 1

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 keep

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 c

This study furnishes data on executions performed in the United States under civil authority. It includes a description of each individual executed and the circ