("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
- So imagine you're about to be executed
by lethal injection,
and it gets pretty close to the time they strap you down,
they stick the needle inside your flesh
and then wait half an hour
to see whether they can actually kill you.
A stay of execution can occur for any number of reasons,
including reviews by lower courts
or a pending trial attached to the case.
In fact, almost all convicted inmates in the U.S.
get at least one stay of execution
while their legal issues are being resolved.
Obviously, these add pressure
to an already intense situation,
especially when we consider that these could be issued
months or days or even minutes before a prisoner
is actually executed.
Here are five of the most nerve-racking stays of execution
in U.S. history.
("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
A man named Jake Bird
was tried and convicted for the ax murder
of Bertha Kludt in 1947.
Now, initially, Bird pled innocent
despite the fact that he was caught with a bloody ax
near the victim's home.
In an attempt to postpone his execution,
Bird claimed that he had committed
an additional 29 to 44 murders,
and it worked sort of.
Authorities believed him.
They began investigating long unsolved cases,
and they actually linked him to 11 other murders
in seven states.
However, eventually the execution went through,
and Bird was hanged in 1949.
("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
In 1989, a fellow named Troy Davis
was convicted in the state of Georgia
for fatally shooting an off-duty police officer.
His guilt, however, was challenged
by several organizations
and hundreds of thousands of online petitioners.
Additionally, of the nine witnesses
who originally testified against Davis,
seven recanted their stories.
As a result of this, Davis's execution was stayed
three times between 2007 and 2011.
In this third and last instance,
the Supreme Court justices failed to intervene,
and so Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection
on September 20th, 2011.
He maintained his innocence to the victim's family
right up until the end.
("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
A man in Texas named James David Autry
was sentenced to death in 1980 for a double murder
allegedly when he refused to pay
for a six pack of beer.
On October 4th, 1983, his scheduled execution
went so far as actually strapping him down into the gurney,
inserting the needle into his arm
before the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.
They reviewed the constitutionality
of Texas's execution system
and eventually ruled that Autry's execution could proceed
in March of 1984.
("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
In 1951, a married couple named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
were sentenced to death for passing atom bomb secrets
to the Soviet Union.
Now, they protested their innocence
and spent the next two years in a legal battle
for their lives.
In 1953, a Supreme Court justice
named William O. Douglas reviewed their argument
and ruled for a stay of execution.
At that time, Douglas attempted to go on vacation,
but he was summoned to an emergency session of the court,
where they ruled by a narrow five to four margin
to set that stay of execution aside,
and the Rosenbergs were electrocuted that evening.
("Wake Up" by Kai Engel)
In 1948, a man named Caryl Chessman
was convicted on 17 felony counts
after he pretended to be a police officer
and robbed and sexually assaulted several women.
Now, although he did not kill anyone,
Chessman was sentenced to death
under California's stringent anti-kidnapping laws.
He spent the next 12 years writing books
professing his innocence,
and one was even made into a movie.
Celebrities of the time,
like former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt
and evangelist Billy Graham, supported his cause.
Concerned that Chessman's execution
might trigger demonstrations
against then president Eisenhower in Uruguay,
the governor of California at the time,
a man named Edmund Pat Brown,
granted Chessman a stay of execution.
A federal judge granted a second stay of execution
on May 2nd, 1960 just a minute before Chessman
was due to be gassed.
However, the judge's secretary misdialed
the phone number for the prison
and by the time she finally got through,
cyanide pellets had already been dropped
into the gas chamber.
Now that we've covered these five grim stays of execution,
I'm curious.
What do you think about the death penalty?
Let me know, have a conversation in the comments below.
And if you'd like to learn more
about nerve-racking stays of execution,
check out our original article on HowStuffWorks.com.