Between 1623 and 1960 (the date of the last execution as of 1999), Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont legally put to death more than 700 men and women for a wide variety of capital crimes ranging from army desertion to murder. This is a companion volume to Legal Executions in New York State and Legal Executions in New Jersey, both published by McFarland. It is comprised of chronologically arranged biographical entries for the executed persons. Each entry gives personal data on the executed person, including age, ethnicity, and gender, as well as a detailed account of the crime for which he or she was sentenced to death and information on the place and method of execution. Fully indexed.

This reference work contains details of all the crimes resulting in executions in the fifteen western American territories. For each territory, entries are arranged chronologically and entered under the name of the condemned. Each entry provides the date, location, background and actions of the crime; details of the trial and execution of sentence; and references to the crime and execution in contemporary newspapers.

On August 5, 1639, Gregory Peterson, a soldier at the Fort Amsterdam garrison, was executed by a firing squad for an unknown act of mutiny. Peterson was the first person known to be executed in what was to become New York. All known executions conducted in or by the estate of New York from 1639 through 1963 are covered here. In 1963 the last execution occurred before the state formally abolished the death penalty in 1965 (and reinstated it in 1995). Arranged chronologically, each entry includes the executed person's name and race, and the crime for which he or she was sentenced to death. This is followed by details of the crime and information on the place and method of execution.

Between 1623 and 1960 (the date of the last execution as of 1999), Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont legally put to death more than 700 men and women for a wide variety of capital crimes ranging from army desertion to murder. This companion volume to the previously released Legal Executions in New York State (McFarland,1997) is comprised of chronologically arranged biographical entries for the executed persons. Each entry gives personal data on the executed person, including age, ethnicity, and gender, as well as a detailed account of the crime for which he or she was sentenced to death and information on the place and method of execution. Fully indexed.

For more than 300 years Massachusetts executed men and women convicted of murder. This book offers an account of how the efforts of reformers and abolitionists and the Supreme Judicial Court's commitment to the rule of law ultimately converged to end the death penalty in Massachusetts.

Traces the evolution of the death penalty in a single state from the colonial era to the present

New England is renowned for its quaint towns, beautiful landscapes, and busy ports. But it is also infamous as the setting for unexplained deaths, ghost stories, bizarre murders, and peculiar wills and epitaphs. In New England Nightmares: True Tales of the Strange and Gothic, author Keven McQueen explores the darker and stranger side of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. With shocking and unforgettable tales from the tip of Maine all the way to the New Jersey shore, this eerie collection explores our fascination with death and the unknown, including tales of medical students digging up bodies to dissect, of a murderer's bones being wired together after death, and of Dr. Timothy Clark Smith, who requested that he be buried with a breathing tube and glass window so he could see the outside world. An intriguing and frightful look into the odder side of the Northeast, New England Nightmares promises to send chills down your spine.

This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.

"This book is the first to systematically investigate the capital punishment of girls and women in one jurisdiction in the United States during nearly four centuries. Using Connecticut as an essential case study because of its long history as a colony and a state, this study is the first of its kind not only for New England but for the United States. The author uses rich archival sources to look critically at the gendered differential in the application of the death penalty from the seventeenth century until the abolition of capital punishment in Connecticut in 2012. In addition to analyzing cases of executions, this monograph offers an innovative focus on women and girls who escaped judicial execution with death sentences that were avoided, reversed, reprieved, or commuted. The book fully describes the impact of the rise and fall of witchcraft allegations during the last half of the seventeenth century, the clash between the degradation of slavery and Enlightenment ideals that was the provocation for the de facto end of female capital punishment in the New Republic, the introduction of two degrees of murder that effectively provided an escape hatch from the gallows, and a detailed look at the unique case of Lydia Sherman, whose sentence to life in prison under the Connecticut murder statute of 1846 emphatically confirmed the unofficial state exemption of females from the gallows. The book will attract attention from a broad audience interested in criminology, criminal justice, capital punishment, women's studies, and legal history. Anti-death penalty advocates, law school activists, public defenders, capital punishment litigators, and jurists will also find the book useful. Pivotal cases since 1900 are also examined"--

In the century following the Civil War, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia legally executed hundreds of men and women convicted of capital crimes. Based on exhaustive research of court records, newspapers death certificates and even gravestones, this book provides the essential details of each case. Arranged by state, entries for each execution are listed in chronological order, giving the name, race and age of the prisoner and a description of the crime of which he or she was convicted. The motive, if known, the date and place of the execution, and relevant sources are also included. Appendices provide preliminary lists of executions in these states before 1866, including some cases dating back to the 17th century. A significant number of hitherto undiscovered executions, further reveals that America's experience with capital punishment is more extensive than previously known.