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Billy Bailey - |
Billy Bailey became the third person to be hanged in
Background.
He was born the 19th of 23 children. His mother died shortly after his birth
and his stepmother beat him and called him worthless according to records of
social workers who found Bailey, at 12, "a seriously disturbed child who
needs professional help." It was
argued, however, that Bailey got that help in institutions and from the foster
family he turned to for support.
He was sentenced to death in 1980, at the
age of 33, for the shooting of an elderly farming couple, Clara and Gilbert
Lambertson. He had robbed a liquor store
and then hitched a ride from his foster sister's house and asked to be dropped
at the Lambertson's farm. There, apparently intent on stealing their pickup
truck, he shot them, arranged their bodies in chairs and fled on foot to nearby
woods where he was captured by a state trooper.
Asked why he committed the murders, Bailey
said: ''I don't really know. I just know that I feel bad about it. It hurts
sometimes when I think about it. When I say hurt, I think about the Lambertsons
and how much they hate me and I start to cry and sometimes I cry myself to
sleep at night." Members of the
victims' family were not moved. He said
he did not remember the killings because he was drunk and high on Valium at the
time.
Bailey told the state Pardons Board at a clemency hearing "I feel the law
sentenced me to hang and I should hang," "I don't want to, but that
was the law."
Preparations.
The wooden gallows had been built in the grounds of the Delaware Correctional
Centre at
Bailey was moved from his prison cell to a
caravan close to the gallows in preparation for the execution where he spent
his last 24 hours sleeping, eating, watching television, talking with staff and
meeting with his sister Betty Odom, 53, the prison chaplain, and his attorney.
For his last meal he had requested a well-done steak, a baked potato with sour
cream and butter, buttered rolls, peas and vanilla ice cream.
The hanging.
A few minutes before
His glasses had been removed. He was wearing a prison-issue blue denim coat
draped over his shoulders, the top two buttons fastened to keep it from blowing
off in the wind. His arms were fastened at his sides.
As is customary, a direct telephone line to the Delaware Governor was kept open
up to the last minute in case of a reprieve.
Two guards wearing black jumpsuits and black hoods held in place by baseball
caps, escorted Bailey who weighed 220 lbs. up the steps to the gallows platform
where he stood with the six coil noose swaying in the night breeze beside him
until the 40 or so witnesses had entered the compound.
He stood expressionless, flanked by the guards for nearly five minutes. One
faced forward holding Bailey's left arm. The other kept his back to witnesses
and held the prisoner's shoulder.
Warden Robert Snyder, who was to be the hangman, was standing further to the
right
When the witnesses were in position, Bailey was led
onto the trap, a nylon webbing strap placed around his ankles and a black hood
pulled down over his head and upper chest. The noose was placed over the hood.
Several times Snyder felt at the hood to be certain that the knot was correctly
positioned beneath Bailey's left ear.
Snyder asked Bailey if he had any last words but did not hear Bailey's reply.
"Pardon?" Snyder said, "No sir."
Bailey repeated.
Bailey stood calmly on the trap and was seen
to squeeze his right fist into a tight ball. A moment later, at
Bailey's body spun counter clockwise six times, then
rotated once in the opposite direction. A canvas tarpaulin was now released to
conceal the body, just his dangling feet in white tennis shoes remaining
visible. He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at
Gail Stallings, a spokeswoman for the
Correction Department later told reporters that the execution had occurred
"without complication."
An independent trauma surgeon said 11
minutes was not an unusual amount of time to wait for the pulse to stop after
the spinal cord has been cut. "The heart beats on its own," said the
surgeon, Willie C. Blair. "That's why we can transplant them."
Edmund Lyons, Bailey's attorney, said he "found the process mediaeval and
barbaric."
Saxton Lambertson, 68, one of the victims' two sons who witnessed the execution
along with seven reporters and 12 official witnesses, said his parents
"were very innocent people they were old and small and he was a big brute.
He chose to shoot them so he chose to die."
The victims' great-grandson, Chris Lambertson, 20, of
150 demonstrators for and against the death
penalty had also congregated at the prison.
Bailey's execution was Delaware's first hanging for 50 years, only 25 other
people (including three women) being hanged from 1904 to May 1946. Executions
were carried out in public up to 1935.
Comment.
The only thing that seems wrong
about this execution is the date, one feels that it
should have been 1896. It seems to have
been like the hangings one used to see in cowboy films. Although the actual
death was accomplished without any apparent suffering, no effort is made to
spare Bailey's feelings or speed up the process. This will be the last hanging
in