This is a true murder mystery involving two families, the Lufkins and the Roses, who were neighbors living in southwestern Minnesota in the late 1800s. William Rose fell in love with Lufkins beautiful daughter, Grace, but her father put a stop to the budding romance. This sparked the bitter feud between the families. In the spring of 1888, Moses Lufkin sold his farm and moved in with his niece, Fannie Slover and her family. They lived in Gales Township in Redwood County. On the evening of August 22, 1888, Moses was conversing with the Slover family while seated on a lounge with his back against the window. Suddenly a shot was heard and Lufkin placed his hand on his heart, collapsed, and was dead within minutes. Eli Slover rushed to the window, saw a man fleeing the scene, and thought it was William Rose. Two days later Rose was arrested. The evidence presented was entirely circumstantial, and Rose was acquitted at the first two trials. At the third trial, the jury brought in a guilty verdict, and Judge Webber sentenced Rose to hang. Appeals to the highest courts were made, but to no avail. Governor Merriam sets the date of execution for October 16, 1891. At the gallows, Rose gives his last speech, declaring his innocence; stating Eli Slover is the man to watch. At 5 am Sheriff Charlie Mead pulls the lever, a crash is heard, and Roses body lies in a heap on the floor; the rope had snapped in two. The deputies pick up Roses limp body, carry him to the gallows, and adjust another noose around his neck. The trap gets sprung a second time and this time the rope holds, launching Roses spirit into eternity.

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

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. 16-page b&w photo insert.

An award-winning writer traces the life of the father of iconic Civil Rights martyr Emmett Till--a man who was executed by the Army ten years before Emmett's murder. An evocative and personal exploration of individual and collective memory in America by one of the most formidable Black intellectuals of our time. In 1955, Emmett Till, aged fourteen, traveled from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. Several weeks later he returned, dead; allegedly he whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son. She chose to leave his casket open. Images of her brutalized boy were published widely. While Emmett's story is known, there's a dark side note that's rarely mentioned. Ten years earlier, Emmett's father was executed by the Army for rape and murder. In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett's murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and a haunting intimacy to this devastating story. An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is completely original in its delivery--an engaging and enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons. Wideman turns seventy-five this year, and he brings the force of his substantial intellect and experience to this beautiful, stirring book, his first nonfiction in fifteen years.

This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.

Ugly Prey tells the riveting story of poor Italian immigrant Sabella Nitti, the first woman ever sentenced to hang in Chicago, in 1923, for the alleged murder of her husband. Journalist Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi leads readers through the case, showing how, with no evidence and no witnesses, Nitti was the target of an obsessed deputy sheriff and the victim of a faulty legal system. She was also—to the men who convicted her and reporters fixated on her—ugly. For that unforgiveable crime, the media painted her as a hideous, dirty, and unpredictable immigrant, almost an animal. Featuring two other fascinating women—the ambitious and ruthless journalist who helped demonize Sabella through her reports and the brilliant, beautiful, 23-year-old lawyer who helped humanize her with a jailhouse makeover—Ugly Prey is not just a page-turning courtroom drama but also a thought-provoking look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class within the American justice system.

In 1845 twenty thousand people gathered in Lawrenceville, Illinois, to witness the hanging of Betsey Reed for poisoning her husband. Considered a witch by some, a victim by others; this is her story.