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James French (murderer)
James Donald French (ca. 1936 – 10 August 1966) was an American criminal who was the last person executed under Oklahoma's death penalty laws prior to '' Furman v. Georgia'', which suspended capital punishment in America from 1972 until 1976. Background and crime James French was serving a life sentence in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester for killing Frank Boone, a West Virginia motorist who had picked him up while hitchhiking, in 1958. French had requested a death sentence for that charge, but the jury handed down a life sentence anyway, against his wishes. Dismayed, French wrote several letters to the governor asking for a new trial, one in which he could get a death sentence, but the letters went unanswered and ignored. While serving his life sentence, French was placed with inmate Eddie Lee Shelton. The two did not get along, in addition to French growing tired of prison life.van Wormer, Katherine (12/8/1995). Execution-inspired murder a form of suicide? ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any three felony, felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment (as a maximum term) can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884. Where life imprisonment is a possible sentenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oklahoma Courts Of Appeal
There are two Courts of Appeal in the U.S. state of Oklahoma: * Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals hears appeals in civil cases. Decisions from this court may be further appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. * Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals hears appeals in criminal cases. This is the highest court for criminal cases in Oklahoma; decisions from this court can only be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point .... References {{Oklahoma-gov-stub Oklahoma state courts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida and Cuba; it is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Spanning , Florida ranks 22nd in area among the 50 states, and with a population of over 21 million, it is the third-most populous. The state capital is Tallahassee, and the most populous city is Jacksonville. The Miami metropolitan area, with a population of almost 6.2 million, is the most populous urban area in Florida and the ninth-most populous in the United States; other urban conurbations with over one million people are Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Various Native American groups have inhabited Florida for at least 14,000 years. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León became th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Spenkelink
John Arthur Spenkelink (March 29, 1949 – May 25, 1979) was an American convicted murderer. He was executed in 1979, the first convicted criminal to be executed in Florida after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, and the second (after Gary Gilmore) in the United States. Crime Spenkelink escaped from a California prison in 1972, where he was serving a five-years-to-life sentence for armed robbery of a fast-food restaurant, five gas stations and two people. On February 4, 1973, the 24-year-old Spenkelink picked up hitchhiker Joseph J. Szymankiewicz and checked into a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. The two had been on an apparent robbery spree. The two got into a heated argument, Spenkelink left the hotel room and upon his return shot Szymankiewicz in the back and beat him with a hatchet. Less than a week later, Spenkelink was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in Buena Park, California and the murder weapon was found in an apartment of one of Spenkelink's associates. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its west by Nevada. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin. Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Firing Squad
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as the brain or heart, most often will kill relatively quickly. A firing squad is normally composed of several soldiers, all of whom are usually instructed to fire simultaneously, thus preventing both disruption of the process by one member and identification of who fired the lethal shot. To avoid disfigurement due to multiple shots to the head, the shooters are typically instructed to aim at the heart, sometimes aided by a paper or cloth target. The prisoner is typically blindfolded or hooded as well as restrained. Media portrayals have frequently shown the condemned being offered a final cigarette as well. Executions can be carried out with the condemned either standing or sitt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Gilmore
Gary Mark Gilmore (born Faye Robert Coffman; December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing in Utah. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision ''Gregg v. Georgia'', he became the first person in almost ten years to be executed in the United States. These new statutes avoided the problems under the 1972 decision in ''Furman v. Georgia,'' which had resulted in earlier death penalty statutes being deemed "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional. (The Supreme Court had previously ordered all states to commute death sentences to life imprisonment after ''Furman''.) Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in 1977. His life and execution were the subject of the 1979 nonfiction novel ''The Executioner's Song'' by Norman Mailer, and 1982 TV film of the novel star ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luis Monge (mass Murderer)
Luis José Monge (August 21, 1918 – June 2, 1967) was a convicted mass murderer who was executed in the gas chamber at Colorado State Penitentiary in 1967. Monge was the last inmate to be executed before an unofficial moratorium on execution that lasted for more than four years while most death penalty cases were on appeal, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in ''Furman v. Georgia'' in 1972, invalidating all existing death penalty statutes as written. Murders Monge, a Denver, Colorado, insurance salesman, was a native of Puerto Rico who grew up in New York. He was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his wife, Leonarda, and three of their ten children after she discovered his incestuous relationship with their 13-year-old daughter, Diann Kissell. The murders were committed on June 29, 1963. Monge's murder victims were: Leonarda, Alan (aged 6), Vincent (aged 4), and Teresa (11 months old). Immediately after the four murders, Monge called police and admi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gas Chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History General Rochambeau developed a rudimentary method in 1803, during the Haitian Revolution, filling ships' cargo holds with sulfur dioxide to suffocate prisoners of war. The scale of these operations was brought to larger public attention in the 2005 book ''Napoleon's Crimes'', although the allegations of scale and sources were heavily questioned. In America, the utilization of a gas chamber was first proposed by Allan McLane Hamilton to the state of Nevada. Since then, gas chambers have been used as a method of execution of condemned prisoners in the United States and continue to be a legal execution method in three states, seeing a possible, legislated reintroduction, although redundant in practice since the early 1990s. Lithuania used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aaron Mitchell (murderer)
Aaron Mitchell (d. April 12, 1967) was executed in the gas chamber for murdering police officer Arnold Gamble in Sacramento on February 15, 1963. Mitchell was the last person to be executed in California before the Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ... ruled in 1972 that capital punishment was unconstitutional (the Supreme Court of the United States made a similar ruling later that year). He was the 194th person to be executed by gassing in California (1937–67), and the only person to be executed in that state during the term of Governor Ronald Reagan (1967–1975). Both Reagan and his predecessor had declined clemency. Mitchell's case had been heard twice by the US Supreme Court and twice by the California Supreme Court. Prior to his exe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Fries
French fries ( North American English), chips ( British English), finger chips (Indian English), french-fried potatoes, or simply fries, are '' batonnet'' or '' allumette''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin from Belgium and France. They are prepared by cutting potatoes into even strips, drying them, and frying them, usually in a deep fryer. Pre-cut, blanched, and frozen russet potatoes are widely used, and sometimes baked in a regular or convection oven; air fryers are small convection ovens marketed for frying potatoes. French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack, and they commonly appear on the menus of diners, fast food restaurants, pubs, and bars. They are often salted and may be served with ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, or other local specialities. Fries can be topped more heavily, as in the dishes of poutine or chili cheese fries. French fries can be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Book Of Lists
The ''Book of Lists'' refers to any one of a series of books compiled by David Wallechinsky, his father Irving Wallace and sister Amy Wallace. Each book contains hundreds of lists (many accompanied by textual explanations) on unusual or obscure topics, for example: * Famous people who died during sexual intercourse * The world's greatest libel suits * People suspected of being Jack the Ripper * Worst places to hitchhike * Dr. Demento's 10 Worst Song Titles of All Time * People misquoted by Ronald Reagan * Breeds of dogs which bite people the most, and the least The first ''Book of Lists'' was published in 1977, a second volume came out in 1980 and the third appeared in 1983. ''Book of Lists for the 1990s'' was published in 1993; yet another volume, ''The New Book of Lists'', was published in 2005. The first volume was initially controversial and banned in some libraries and parts of the United States when it was published due to, among other things, a chapter that graphical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
