Invitation to an Execution: A History of the Death Penalty in the United States by Gordon Morris Bakken

Author:Gordon Morris Bakken [Bakken, Gordon Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Penology
ISBN: 9780826348562
Google: IGwsAQAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 9378383
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2010-01-15T10:20:16+00:00

Chapter XII: The Death Penalty in the Great Plains

John Gregory Jacobsen

The ten states of the Great Plains run along a regional fault line where North, South, and West intersect. The historical pattern of capital punishment in this vast and open area follows wider regional trends, and therefore divides almost predictably along these invisible geographic boundaries. Although the generally higher execution numbers along the western side of the Plains stand in relative contrast to the smaller totals of the upper eastern, or “midwestern” side of the region, both areas are dwarfed by the voluminous statistics of the southern Plains states. The pattern also holds steady for gender, with all nine women executed in the history of the Great Plains dying in the region’s southernmost states. This study traces the history of capital punishment in the Great Plains, taking a state-by-state approach up the region’s western arch and back down the eastern side to the southernmost Plains states, examining the historical patterns, laws, and people of this core region of the United States.

New Mexico

Convicted murderer Marcus Butler died on the gallows in New Mexico in February 1851—the first recorded legal execution in New Mexico Territory under U.S. jurisdiction. Since that day, at least seventy-three additional executions have taken place, including twenty-eight since New Mexico statehood in 1912 and one in the post-1976 modern era of capital punishment. With executions conducted at the county level through the 1920s, early records are scant, pushing the likely number of executions well beyond the forty-seven recorded in the territorial period.

Fully accurate or not, records list the overwhelming racial majority of those executed in New Mexico Territory as Hispanic, a group representing twenty-five of the forty-seven executions, or 53 percent of the total. Fourteen whites make up only 30 percent of those executed in the territorial period, although the record also lists eight racially “unknown” individuals. Three African Americans make up 6 percent of the total. When including the statehood period, the racial gap only widens with forty-seven of the seventy-four persons executed listed as Hispanic. Whites represent 26 percent, African Americans 6 percent, and racially unknown 11 percent of those executed in both the territorial and statehood periods. No legal recorded execution of an American Indian has occurred in New Mexico, a state with the nation’s fourth-largest Indian population. Indeed, in the modern era of capital punishment, only one of the sixty death sentences handed down to American Indians in the United States, and none of the eight executions, has occurred in New Mexico. Notably, the lone death sentence of an American Indian in New Mexico during the modern era has since been overturned or commuted.1 The only execution of a woman in New Mexico occurred in the territorial period when Paula Angel, age unknown and of Hispanic origin, was hanged for murder on April 26, 1861.

New Mexico presents one of the more unusual execution histories of the Great Plains states, including its unfortunate place as the setting for Pancho Villa’s march, the 1916 cross-border raid on the town of Columbus, and the six death sentences carried out in its wake.

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