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Season 6, Episode 5- The Last Hanging in Detroit

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Content provided by Tim Kiska and The Detroit History Podcast. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Tim Kiska and The Detroit History Podcast or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn’t like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking government to outlaw the death penalty.

We speak with legal scholar David Chardavoyne, author of A Hanging In Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution Under Michigan Law. Lawyer Eugene Wanger tells us how the ban on capital punishment went through when the state’s constitution was rewritten in the early 1960s. And historian Matthew Daley, of Grand Valley State University, explains why it never took hold in the state’s early days.

Explicit content warning: audio of an execution.

  continue reading

61 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 419125645 series 2489430
Content provided by Tim Kiska and The Detroit History Podcast. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Tim Kiska and The Detroit History Podcast or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn’t like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking government to outlaw the death penalty.

We speak with legal scholar David Chardavoyne, author of A Hanging In Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution Under Michigan Law. Lawyer Eugene Wanger tells us how the ban on capital punishment went through when the state’s constitution was rewritten in the early 1960s. And historian Matthew Daley, of Grand Valley State University, explains why it never took hold in the state’s early days.

Explicit content warning: audio of an execution.

  continue reading

61 episodes

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