|
Hanging has been practiced legally in the United States of America from the nation's birth, up to 1972 when the United States Supreme Court found capital punishment to be in violation of the eighth amendment to the United States Constitution.〔FURMAN v. GEORGIA. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 11 December 2011. == Colonial America == In 1623 Daniel Frank was condemned to hang for theft in the Jamestown colony. It was the first hanging to take place in that part of the British North American colonies that eventually broke away as the United States. Frank is actually not the very first entry in Watt Espy’s encyclopedic 15,000-plus catalogue of “American” executions — he’s the second. In 1608, George Kendall had been shot for a mutinous plot, also in Jamestown, Virginia. We don’t have a firm date for that event. It seems that Kendall was suspected of spying for the Spanish against the interests of the British explorers and settlers. (http://www.executedtoday.com/2012/08/05/1623-daniel-frank-the-first-hanging-in-the-usa/) John Billington is thought to be one of the first men to be hanged in New England. Billington was convicted of murder in September of 1630 after he shot and killed John Newcomen.〔 Bradford, William. ''Of Plymouth Plantation.'' The Vision Forum, Inc, 1999〕 During the Salem witch trials, most of the men and women convicted of witchcraft were sentenced to public hanging. It is estimated that seventeen women and two men were hanged as a result of the trials. However, modern scholars maintain that thousands of individuals were hanged for witchcraft throughout the American colonies.〔Stack, Richard A. ''Dead Wrong: Violence, Vengeance, and the Victims of Capital Punishment.'' Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006.〕 Hangings during the colonial era of America were mostly performed publicly in order to deter the behavior for which the criminals were hanged. Thousands of townspeople would gather around the gallows to hear a sermon and observe the hangings of convicted criminals. Such experiences were deemed as good lessons on morality for the children and townspeople. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hanging in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|