Saturday, July 05, 2008

CLEWS Your Home for Historic True Crime: Michigan and the Death Penalty—A Brief and Horrible Experience

 

Between the Simmons and the Fitzpatrick cases, Michiganders developed a sour taste for the death penalty, and in 1847, Michigan became the first state in the Union--indeed, by some accounts, the first democracy in the English-speaking world--to abolish the death penalty.

Simmons was not the last man hanged in Michigan, though the authorities would have had it that way. In 1938, the federal government hanged a bank robber by the name of Tony Chebatoris for killing a bystander during a holdup in Midland. Then Governor Frank Murphy begged President Roosevelt to move Chebatoris's execution out of state, but the federal authorities insisted on hanging him in Michigan.

To this day, the ghosts of Stephen Simmons and Patrick Fitzpatrick still haunt the state, and there is never any serious talk about bringing the death penalty to Michigan.

The trial of Tony Chebatoris took place in the Federal Court House in Bay City, Michigan.

CLEWS Your Home for Historic True Crime: Michigan and the Death Penalty—A Brief and Horrible Experience