Tag: law
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San Quentin, Doil Miller and Alfred Dusseldorf – Justice? Or just law?
At San Quentin 7 March 1952 dawned grey and cold, not unusual for the area. The prison’s inmates, then nearly two thousand strong, knew that day was unusual. Two of their number, Miller and Dusseldorf, were to die at 10am that morning for a robbery and murder committed in Alameda in 1949. As they sat…
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Justice denied in Colorado; Joe Arridy visits ‘Roy’s Penthouse.’
“Yes, they are killing me.” – Joe Arridy, when asked by Warden Roy Best if he understood why he was about to step into Colorado’s gas chamber. It’s rarer than it used to be that a case affects me as much as this one. If you cover true crime for a living then you learn…
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Justice; Regular or Extra Crispy.
Execution has long been part of criminal history, society’s ultimate sanction for the very worst offenders. Less enthusiastic supporters regard it as a necessary evil and a deterrent even while acknowledging its distasteful nature. Opponents believe it no deterrent at all, that it’s applied arbitrarily and makes society as uncivilized and barbarous as the condemned…
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On This Day in 1890; William Kemmler – The World’s First Legal Electrocution.
August 6, 1890 saw the dawn of a new age for criminal history. At Auburn Prison in upstate New York there was the execution.of one William Kemmler, condemned for murdering girlfriend Matilda Ziegler with a hatchet. There was nothing remarkable about Kemmler (an alcoholic vegetable hawker with a vicious temper) or about his crime. There…
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On This Day in 1689; Judge Jeffreys, who gave them enough rope.
The original ‘Hanging Judge’ his name became a byword for bias, ruthlessness, callousness and cruelty, Jeffreys would die as a prisoner himself.
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George Kelly, falsely convicted and quickly hanged.
For most crime buffs the name ‘George Kelly’ inspires memories of rattling Tommy guns, bank robberies and the kidnapping of Charles Urschel, all attributed to American crook George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. Kelly, a second-rate gangster at best, was made out to be far worse than he actually was, spending the remainder of his life in…
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