TY  - BOOK
AU  - Chardavoyne,David G.
TI  - A hanging in Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the last execution under Michigan law 
SN  - 0814331327 (alk. paper)
AV  - HV8579 .C33 2003
U1  - 364.66/09774/34 21
PY  - 2003///
CY  - Detroit
PB  - Wayne State University Press
KW  - Simmons, Stephen Gifford,
KW  - Hanging
KW  - Michigan
KW  - Detroit
KW  - History
KW  - Capital punishment
KW  - Detroit (Mich.)
KW  - Social conditions
KW  - Politics and government
N1  - 2004 Michigan Notable Book; Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-227) and index
N2  - Publisher description:  On September 24, 1830, Stephen G. Simmons, a fifty-year-old tavern keeper and farmer, was hanged in Detroit for murdering his wife, Levana Simmons, in a drunken, jealous rage.  Michigan executed only two people during the fifty-year period, from 1796 to 1846, when the death penalty was legal within its boundaries.  Simmons was the second and last person to be executed under Michigan law.  In A Hanging in Detroit David G. Chardavoyne vividly evokes not only the crime, trial, and execution of Simmons, but also the setting and players of the drama, social and legal customs of the times, and the controversy that arose because of the affair.  Chardavoyne illuminates his account of this important moment in Michigan's history with many little-known facts, creating a study that is at once an engrossing story and the first historical examination of the event that helped bring about the abolition of the death penalty in Michigan
ER  -