Dodging Justice

Alva Campbell, a convicted killer, escaped execution in Lucasville Ohio when the executioner could not find a vein to inject them with the drug cocktail. Convicted of murdering an 18 year old in a car jacking, he was strapped to a trolley in the death chamber for 25 minutes before they gave up. He then gave what must be the quote of the year .....

Alva Campbell - Car Jacked A Boy and Killed Him

Wiping away tears and shaking hands with members of the execution team he said "This is a day I'll never forget". Actually he will only remember it until June the 5th, 2019 when the state will try to kill him again .... but his lawyers want the firing squad as an alternative method. He's managed to avoid the punishment since 1998, his innocent victim, Charles Dials, was just 18 when Campbell cold bloodily murdered him.

Of course he is not the only person to postpone or dodge the gallows, sometimes fairly or sometimes not .... A botched hanging in Fiji of a man known only as 'The Man Franks' ....

The Man Franks ... Execution Botched

.. resulted in him being spared in an 1872 report from Fiji. Three minutes after dropping from the gallows, he started moving and talking, asking to be put out of his misery. He managed to free his hands and reached up and pull the rope from his throat, forgiving those around him for the "black job" they'd made of his execution. Finally an official cut Franks down. After watching such a horror show, no one wanted to go through it again, and Franks was spared death.

Some however, are rather sad indictments of what passed for justice to women in misogynist cultures in the West: In 1650, Anne Greene was a servant in the household of Sir Thomas Read. She became pregnant by his grandson, but didn't know it, so when she had a still birth she tried to hide it, which was a capital offence under the Concealment of Pregnancy Act. She was hung and her friends had pulled at her body to hasten her demise the body was cut down and delivered to a medical school for dissection. However the doctors found her breathing and managed to revive her ... Greene was pardoned after public opinion took this a a judgement of gods mercy. Taking her coffin as a souvenir, she settled in another town, married, and had children. Her father thought to charge admission to meet her, and the money settled all her medical and legal debts.

In 1724, Maggie Dickson got pregnant while her husband was away at sea, and tried to hide the fact, which was still a capital criminal offence as it was in Anne Green's time. She was executed by hanging in Edinburgh and her own family was able to claim the body (and keep it from the dissection table, which was often the fate of hanged felons). As the family took Maggie in her coffin toward the cemetery, they heard her tapping on the inside of the coffin. Maggie's survival was taken as an act of God. She became a celebrity, nicknamed Half-Hangit Maggie. She lived another 40 years, and today a tavern stands in her honour near the site of her hanging.

Maggie Dicksons Pub - Grassmarket Edinburgh.

We don't see this sparing anymore, as the the pronouncement of many death sentences ends with the words "until dead." That means whatever it takes, however long it takes your dying ... so Alva will meet his maker one way or another. There was a similar case to Alva Campbell's in the fate of Willie Francis. A first attempt to execute Willie Francis in 1946 by electrocution in Louisiana didn't work. He was executed by electric chair in Louisiana in 1947.

Willie Francis Was Executed At The Second Attempt.

But Alva does have a modern soul mate in Romell Broom who in 1984 was convicted of the murder, kidnapping, and rape of Tryna Middleton, age 14. He was also convicted  in a separate incidence of raping a female child ... he has also served time for robbery, aggravated robbery and four counts of kidnap of a male child. He was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2009. However, the executioners tried for two hours to maintain an IV line, through which they could inject the lethal drugs, before Ohio Governor Ted Strickland issued a one-week reprieve ...

Romell Broom - Then And Now

Roll on more endless court actions, and that one week became another nine years, and he is now scheduled for execution on June 17, 2020 - 36 years after being sentenced to death, and 11 years after they tried to execute him. But lets not forget the victims of all these tales .... those whose lives were taken by these grinning monsters.

Tryna Middleton (14) and Charles Dials (18) - The Victims.

Those whose voices are no longer heard, as anti-death penalty groups always seem to forget the impact of the monsters actions on the innocent and their families ..... I am not a proponent of the death sentence generally, because of potential wrong convictions, but there are exceptions that I would make, and these two men are in that list.