Billy Bailey

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Billy Bailey (* 1947 in Smyrna , Delaware ; † January 25, 1996 there ) was an American murderer. He was the last to be sentenced to death in the United States by hanging .

Life

Bailey was born the nineteenth of twenty-three poor children; his mother died when he was six months old. His father remarried shortly afterwards, and his stepmother abused Bailey. When he was 10 years old, his father died at the age of 75. Billy Bailey and his twelve year old sister were abandoned by the stepmother at the cemetery. An elderly half-brother took him in in Delaware, and he also beat and mistreated him. Social workers who met him at the age of twelve noted that he was severely disturbed and in need of professional help. Bailey was already known to the police as a young man for theft and involvement in quarrels.

On May 21, 1979, he learned that he was facing a repeal of the relaxation of the prison regime (accommodation in a work-release center ) and a life in prison for forging checks . He then left his accommodation, robbed a liquor store and shot an elderly couple on the run. He was sentenced to death by hanging in 1980 for the double murder.

After the appeal was exhausted, the death penalty was carried out in Delaware in 1996. In the meantime, Delaware had switched to lethal injection , but Bailey refused. Since the last execution on the gallows in Delaware was in the 1940s, the Delaware law enforcement agency turned to Walla Walla for information , where death sentences by hanging had been carried out in 1993 and 1994. The US Army , in which the death penalty by hanging had only been prohibited since 1986, was able to provide detailed information from its orders and guidelines, on the basis of which the execution process was planned. The newspaper The Washington Post reported that the leaders in Delaware were so concerned about the progress of enforcement that they practiced the procedure to prepare for several hours. It caught the attention of the international media and, by coinciding with other executions in the US, sparked discussions on the death penalty.

Since 1965, Bailey was the third person to be hanged in the USA. After him, no more executions were carried out with the gallows in the USA , but mainly carried out by lethal injection. The gallows built in 1996 in Delaware was not used again and demolished in 2003. Hanging is currently (2019) only intended as an alternative to lethal injection in the state of New Hampshire .

literature

  • Karl Vick: Delaware Readies Gallows as Rare Form of Execution Draws Near. In: The Washington Post, Jan. 21, 1996, page B.01.
  • Karl Vick: An Execution In the Old Way; Delaware Hanging Evokes Justice of Another Era. In: The Washington Post, Jan. 26, 1996, page B.01.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Carlin: The heart to grieve for all America's Billy Baileys, The Independent, Jan. 24, 1996
  2. ↑ Don Terry: Victims' Families Fight for Mercy, The New York Times, February 1, 1996 (report on an initiative by Anne Coleman of Amnesty International Delaware)
  3. ↑ Presentation by Anne Coleman, translated into German, with biographical notes on Billy Bailey on initiative-gegen-die-todesstrafe.de ( memento of the original from October 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.initiative-gegen-die-todesstrafe.de
  4. ↑ a b Killer of 2 Is Hanged In Delaware as Kin Of Victims Watch, The New York Times, January 26, 1996
  5. ↑ Blood Must Flow, Der Spiegel, January 29, 1996
  6. ↑ Michael Schwelien, Die Zeit, 6/1996
  7. ↑ a b Keith D. Harries and Derral Cheatwood: The geography of execution: the capital punishment quagmire in America. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, p. 28. ISBN 9780847681570
  8. ^ Delaware holds first hanging since 1946, CNN, Jan. 25, 1996
  9. ↑ Killer of elderly couple dies by hanging. Daily News (Los Angeles, CA) / The Free Library, Jan. 25, 1996. April 22
  10. ↑ Randall Chase (Associated Press): Delaware's gallows now a historical footnote. Moscow-Pullham Daily News, Jul 10, 2003, p. 9A
personal data
SURNAME Bailey, Billy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American murderer
DATE OF BIRTH 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Smyrna , Delaware
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1996
Place of death Smyrna , Delaware