The hangman and the electric chair - Part 2

In March 1950, Timothy Evans was convicted and hanged in England for the murder of his baby daughter, Geraldine. The court did not proceed with a second charge of the murder of his wife. During the trial, the dull-witted Evans insisted his wife and daughter had been murdered by "the other man" living in the house at 10 Rillington Place, London.

"The other man" was John Reginald Halliday Christie, one of the main witnesses for the prosecution. The trial judge complimented Christie for "his clarity of evidence" during the trial. Three years after Evans had been executed, Christie confessed to murdering eight women in England between 1940 and 1953. One of them was Evans’ wife. Christie was convicted and hanged at Pentonville Prison on July 15, 1953.

In 1966 the British Government granted Timothy Evans a posthumous pardon in recognition of his innocence. But the Evans case is not the only miscarriage of justice under British law where an innocent man has been executed.

In 1819, Thomas Harris, landlord of the Rising Sun Inn, on the York-Newcastle road, was executed for murder. It was later established that the barman at the inn and chief prosecution witness was the actual killer, and Harris had been innocent. The posthumous pardon awarded to Harris did not ameliorate the travesty of justice.

In March 1835 an Irish peddler, Daniel Savage, was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife 10 years earlier. After having his beard shaved off to "make the hangman's job easier", he was allowed a final visit from his sister.

The woman looked at the condemned prisoner, completely baffled, saying, "He's not my brother ... he doesn't look anything like my brother!" There was not enough time to investigate the woman's claim before the man was led to the scaffold and hanged. The sister had been correct. The man who had gone to his death was innocent. His name was Edmund Pine. Not Daniel Savage.

In the same month, another innocent man was executed in England.

Edward Poole Chalker was convicted and sentenced to death for killing a gamekeeper. He was led to the gallows protesting his innocence. Seven years later another man confessed to the crime. Chalker, like Pine, had been innocent.

Unlike Harris, Pine and Chalker, William Habron survived the death cell and the gallows. Habron was sentenced to death in 1876 for the murder of a London police officer, but because of his youth the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Three years later, while Habron was serving his life sentence, a notorious criminal, Charles Pearce, confessed to the murder. William Habron received a pardon and £800 compensation from the British Government.

In 1909, Oscar Slater was sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly woman in Glasgow but like Habron, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. After he had served 19 years in prison, it was established that Slater was completely innocent. He was reprieved and awarded £6,000 compensation.

Another Englishman who cheated the gallows, some claim by divine intervention, was John Lee.

"The miracle in triplicate" occurred in Exeter, England, on February 23, 1885, when John Lee mounted the scaffold to be executed for the murder of Emma Keyse, one time maid-of-honour to Queen Victoria. The trapdoor under the scaffold failed to open. Three times John Lee mounted the scaffold. Three times the trapdoor did not function. After the third attempt, Lee was returned to the condemned cell, and his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. John Lee served 22 years in prison. After his release from prison he emigrated to the US, where he married and never re-offended. He died in 1933.

England abolished the death penalty in 1966, but the deterrent value of the noose in murder and violent crime still engenders heated debate in all sections of the community.

Jesse Strang was publicly hanged at Albany, New York, on August 24, 1857. One of the witnesses to the execution was Levi Kelley, a prosperous farmer from Cooperstown. Strang's execution made such a profound impression on Kelley that he returned to Cooperstown and remarked to neighbours he did not believe anyone could commit murder after witnessing an execution, for fear of being hanged themselves.

Ten days later Kelley shot and killed one of his tenants. Barely four months after he had witnessed Strang's execution, Kelley was hanged on December 28, 1857.

George Swearington was also aware of the deterrent value of the death penalty. As Sheriff of Allegheny County, Maryland, US, Swearington had personally hanged several convicted felons. He was aware of the terror they experienced when not spared a merciful death by having their necks broken, but instead strangled to death on the gallows. Despite his own intimate knowledge of judicial retribution for murder, George Swearington was hanged on October 2, 1829 for murdering his wife.

Another who was aware of the implications of the death penalty and its deterrent value was prominent American lawyer, J. Samuel McCue, of Charlottesville, Virginia. McCue had acted in capital murder cases, both as defence attorney and prosecutor. On February 10, 1905, J. Samuel McCue was hanged in Charlottesville for the murder of his wife.

At the time of McCue's execution in Virginia, Charles Justice was an inmate electrician at the Ohio State Penitentiary and was assigned the task of installing the electric chair in that institution. The significance of the electric chair's installation and the implication of the death penalty as a deterrent to murder were obvious.

Charles Justice was eventually released on parole. A short time later he was accused of killing a police officer, convicted and sentenced to death for murder. On October 27, 1911, Charles Justice was executed in the same electric chair he had constructed and wired at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

In Australia, Ronald Ryan attained the dubious honour of being the last man hanged on February 3, 1967. Ryan was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Victorian prison warder during an escape from Pentridge Prison with another man, Peter Walker.

Walker received a life sentence for his part in the killing, and another murder he committed while on the run. Walker was eventually released from prison, but Ryan suffered his fate at the end of the hangman's noose.

Claims the Ryan case was fraught with political chicanery, and the government of the day, in particular Premier Sir Henry Bolte, wanted a scapegoat to appease the Victorian Prison Officer's Association still persist. Although Victoria abolished capital punishment in 1976, the controversy surrounding Ryan's execution still smoulders.

The Australian legal system is not immune from the same miscarriages of justice experienced in countries that retained the death penalty. But if the death penalty had still been a sentencing option under Australian law these people would, in all probability, have been executed for murder:

• New South Wales, 1947. Frederick McDermott was convicted of murder. He served seven years before a Royal Commission established his innocence. He was released from prison and granted a pardon for wrongful imprisonment.
• South Australia, 1978. Edward Charles Splatt was convicted of murder. He served six years before a Royal Commission established his innocence. He was released from prison and granted a pardon for wrongful imprisonment.
• NSW, 1979. Three men known as the Ananda Marga Trio -  Paul Alister, Ross Dunn and Timothy Anderson were convicted of conspiracy to murder. They served seven years before a judicial inquiry into their convictions, conducted by Mr. Justice Wood in 1985, concluded they were innocent. They were released from prison and granted unconditional pardons.
• NSW, 1980. Douglas Harry Rendall was convicted of murder. Rendall served nine years before a judicial inquiry into his conviction concluded he was innocent. Rendall was released from prison and granted an unconditional pardon.
• Northern Territory, 1982. Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of murder. Served four years before a Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Mr Justice Trevor Morling concluded she was innocent. Lindy Chamberlain was released from prison, compensated for wrongful imprisonment and granted an unconditional pardon.
• Queensland, 1983. Barry Mannix was accused of murdering his father at Surfers Paradise. After allegations Queensland police fabricated Mannix's confession to the murder, three other men were arrested and confessed to the crime. Barry Mannix was immediately released from prison.
• Queensland, 1984. Kelvin Condren was convicted of murder. He served six years before the High Court of Australia and the Queensland Court of Criminal Appeal cast serious doubts on the conviction and his alleged confession. After examining the evidence, Queensland Attorney-General Deane Wells recommended Condren's release from prison. Condren was set free in 1990.
• NSW, 1990. Roger Graham Bawden, surrendered himself to Queanbeyan police and confessed to a murder he committed in 1973. Another man, Johann Ernst Siegfried (Ziggy) Pohl, had been convicted of the murder and had already served over ten years in prison. The murder of Kum Yee "Joyce" Pohl at Queanbeyan became the subject of a special judicial inquiry which cleared Ziggy Pohl of the murder. Pohl was freed from prison and granted an unconditional pardon.

The wrongful imprisonment of an innocent person is a grave miscarriage of justice. But the execution of an innocent person is an irrevocable miscarriage of justice. There is no reprieve from the grave.

In February 1955, British Home Secretary Chuter Ede revealed the weight of that responsibility when he addressed the House of Commons on the death penalty in the Timothy Evans case:

I was the Home Secretary who wrote on Evans' papers "the law must take its course".

I think that the Evans case shows, in spite of all that has been done since, that a mistake was possible and in the form of which a verdict was given in a particular case, a mistake was made.

I hope no future Home Secretary, in office or after he has left office, will ever have to feel that - although he did his best, although none would wish to accuse him of being either careless or inefficient - in fact he sent a man who was not guilty, as charged, to the gallows.