Who was the first person to die via death penalty?
The topic we are learning about is researching firsts. The question I looked at was who was the first person to die via the death penalty. I didn't know anything about this topic before I looked into it.
The first source i looked at for information was the wikipedia page. I found out from that source that William Kemmler was the first person die via the death penalty. Kemmler died via the electric chair at 30 years of age. Kemmler was convicted of murder on may 10th 1889 and was sentenced to death on May 13th 1889 at Auburn prison where William kemmler sentence would be carried out using the electric chair. It took two tries to kill William Kemmler the first try there was not enough electricity hitting Kemmler so the added more volts and he died.
The second source I looked at for information was not very useful to me. It was mainly about the electric chair itself. I still found out that Harold Brown supposdly invented the electric chair. Haorld brown worked with Thomas Edison to test if this chair would really work, they tested it on different animals to see if it would really kill them.
I learnt that William Kemmler was the first person to die viean the death penalty that he was 30 years old when he died. I learnt that he was sentenced because he killed his wife with a hatchet and that there was a lot of arguments saying that it was cruel, unfair and inhumane. This topic effects us in different ways, if this never happened a lot of things will be different.
Hi Julia
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about William Kemmler either, so I was interested to read more about your research. Was he the first person to be sentenced to death (I think that had been happening since at least the Biblical times) or the first person specifically sentence to death by the electric chair? It sounds like Kemmler was a very unpleasant husband. The next thing I would like you to write about in the comments is about how technology has affected punishments in our society. The electric chair made for very different death penalties to when people were hung at the gallows and the whole community would come and watch. What kind of punishments are possible due to advances in technology now? (e.g. home detention?)
sup bro. Just check up on capital letters I guess. It was interesting to read about and I had no idea who William Kemmler was before this.
ReplyDeleteHey Julia,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Lots of information. All you need to do is check your punctuation and capitol letters.
Byron