Capital punishment in Alaska
Between December 28, 1869, and April 14, 1950, between the Department, District, and Territory of Alaska, twelve felons, all male, were executed by hanging for murder, robbery, and other crimes.
[2] The territorial legislature abolished capital punishment in 1957 during preparations for statehood, making Alaska the first in the West Coast of the United States to outlaw executions, along with Hawaii, which did the same.
[1] The first recorded execution to occur in the Alaskan Territory was that of a Stikine Native American, only known by the name Scutd-doo, on December 29, 1869.
The first was the hanging of Fred Hardy, who was convicted of murdering Florence and Con Sullivan, two brothers who were natives of Montana, and F.J. Rooney.
Bird had traveled Northwest to Alaska due to the Klondike Gold Rush and joined with a group consisting of Hurlin, Patterson, Charles Sheffler, and Bird's lover, Norma Strong; he shot Hurlin and Patterson in a fit of jealousy on September 27, 1898.
While Hurlin died on the day of the shooting, Patterson temporarily survived and was transported to Anvik, Alaska, where he lingered before succumbing to his injuries more than six months later, on April 8, 1899.
[14] Bird's death sentence was passed on February 9, 1900, and after a protracted legal battle, he was hanged more than three years later on March 6, 1903.
Eighteen years after the execution of Homer Bird, Mailo Segura was hanged in Fairbanks on April 15, 1921, for murdering his employer, J.E.
[16][15] The second botched hanging was that of Constantine Beaver, another Native American man who spoke no English and was convicted of murdering Egnatty Necketta, a friend, during a drunken brawl[17] on November 15, 1928.
[3] Nelson Charles, a Native American man from Ketchikan, Alaska, was hanged on November 10, 1939, for sexually assaulting and stabbing to death Cecelia Johnson, his 58-year-old mother-in-law.
Austin Nelson and Eugene LaMoore, who were both African American men, were both convicted of murdering Jim Ellen, a shopkeeper in Juneau.
"[22] The abolition followed prolonged debates during discussions pertaining to Alaskan statehood, during which Warren A. Taylor gave an "impassioned speech" pleading for the death penalty to be abolished in the state.
[23] The junior sponsor of the abolition bill, Vic Fisher, stated that one factor that motivated Alaskan politicians to abolish the death penalty was concern surrounding the racial disparity in its application.
[23] Researcher Averil Lerman, who analyzed Alaska's death penalty during legislative attempts to revive capital punishment in the 1990s, noted that the death penalty in Alaska was very rarely employed, and when it was, it was almost exclusively and disproportionately used against Native Americans and Black people; it was also exclusively utilized against people of any race who could not afford better legal help.
In one case, a man named Vuco Perovich had been sentenced to death in Fairbanks in 1904 for murdering a fisherman with an axe and committing arson to conceal the crime.
Dempsey received the death penalty for both murders, but his family could afford an attorney who successfully petitioned President Woodrow Wilson for clemency.
[15] Lerman noted that out of 183 murderers convicted in Alaska between 1935 and 1958, 138 of them were white, two were black, 10 were indigenous Alaskans, 22 were of other Native American heritage, 7 were Filipino, and 1 was uncategorized; nevertheless, the only two black people, Austin Nelson and Eugene LaMoore, were executed, while one Native American, Nelson Charles, was executed as well, and no one of any other race was subjected to the death penalty.
