page_title: Rainey Bethea
section_title: Trial
hierarchical_section_title: Rainey Bethea / Trial, appeal, and petition for habeas corpus / Trial
caption_attribution_description: English: Front of the Jefferson County Jail, located at 514 W. Liberty Street (U.S. Route 60) in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. Built in 1905, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Rainey Bethea was the last person publicly executed in the United States. Bethea, who confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, was convicted of her rape and publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky. Mistakes in performing the hanging, and the surrounding media circus, contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.
context_section_description: Judge Forrest A. Roby of the Daviess Circuit Court ordered the sheriff to transport Bethea to the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville. While being transferred, Bethea made his first confession, admitting that he had raped Edwards and strangled her to death. Bethea also lamented the fact that he had made a mistake by leaving his ring at the crime scene.
  Once incarcerated at the jail, Bethea made a second confession to Robert M. Morton, a notary public, and George H. Koper, a reporter for The Courier-Journal.
  On June 12, 1936, Bethea confessed a third time, telling the guards where he had hidden the jewelry. Owensboro police searched a barn in Owensboro and found the jewelry where Bethea said he had left it. Under Kentucky law, the grand jury could not convene until June 22, and the prosecutor charged Bethea solely with rape. Under extant state statutes, executions for murder and robbery were carried out by electrocution at the state penitentiary in Eddyville. Rape, however, could be punished by public hanging in the county seat where the crime occurred. The prosecutor therefore elected to charge Bethea only with rape in order to avoid a potential legal dilemma as to whether Bethea would be hanged or electrocuted. Bethea was never charged with the remaining crimes of theft, robbery, burglary, giving a false name to police, or murder. After one hour and forty minutes, the grand jury returned an indictment, charging Bethea with rape. 
  On June 25, 1936, officers returned Bethea to Owensboro for the trial, which took place that same day. Bethea asserted a Clyde Maddox would provide an alibi, but Maddox claimed he did not know Bethea. The defense subpoenaed four witnesses: Maddox, Ladd Moorman, Willie Johnson (a supposed accomplice given Bethea's statements), and Allen McDaniel. The first three were served, with McDaniel excluded because the sheriff's office could not find a person named Allen McDaniel.
  On the night before the trial, Bethea announced to his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty, doing so the next day at the start of the trial. The prosecutor still presented the state's case to the jury in spite of the guilty plea, requesting a death penalty for Bethea. In his opening statement, Commonwealth's Attorney Herman Birkhead said, "This is one of the most dastardly, beastly, cowardly crimes ever committed in Daviess County. Justice demands and the Commonwealth will ask and expect a verdict of the death penalty by hanging."
  After questioning 21 witnesses, the prosecution closed its case. The defense did not present or examine any witnesses. After a closing statement by the prosecutor, the judge instructed the jury that since Bethea had pleaded guilty, they must "...fix his punishment, at confinement in the penitentiary for not less than ten years nor more than twenty years, or at death."  After only four and a half minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a sentence of death by hanging. Bethea was then quickly removed from the courthouse and returned to the Jefferson County Jail.
caption: Jefferson County Jail
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