#judicial murder

[victusinveritas]

Meanwhile at sea...

Anyway, the US murdered a boat full of drug runners when they could have just captured them.

[scotianostra]

Sir William Wallace was murdered in London on August 23rd 1305.

I posted at the begining of the month about the betraya; and capture pf Wallace, ot wasn't long before he was taken to London to face a court that had no legal jurisdictian over him.

Wallace was tried in Westminster Hall (which today is part of the Palace of Westminster at the House of Commons entrance and close to the eastern end of the Abbey).

His sentence was read out immediately following the verdict, and included the full details of the punishment usually known as "hanging, drawing and quartering" that Edward Longshanks had introduced as the appropriate penalty for treason. He was then chained prostrate on a hurdle (just a piece of fencing, not a wheeled vehicle as in the film Braveheart) and drawn by two horses through the filthy streets for the public to mock and stone (this being Edward's subtle idea of combining education with entertainment).

William Wallace was dragged first to the Tower, about two and a half miles, and then on to Smithfield via Aldgate, another mile. He was hanged, but cut down while still alive. He was not racked as shown in the film, nor was he allowed a chance to submit to Edward's peace and thereby cut short his suffering (a procedure the screenwriter may have borrowed from the Inquisition).

While held upright by the hangman's rope, he had his privy parts cut away (all of them, and hence emasculation, not castration) and burned in the brazier in front of him. Then, still upright, his stomach was slit open so that he could be ritually disembowelled. His entrails were a;so burnt on the brazier.

The hangman then cut open his chest to pull out his heart. It was considered a manifestation of the hangman's skill that this should still be beating while held in the hangman's hands, but whether he was successful on this occasion is not recorded. It was supposed to be traditional that the hangman should at this point call attention to his achievement by announcing "Behold the heart of a traitor" (in case any in the audience had missed the object of the exercise), but again this has never been stated explicitly in any court record.

The final act was decapitation and quartering. You will note that in effect there are three symbolic deaths here: hanging, evisceration, decapitation. Edward is said to have decreed that treason was a triple crime: against God, against man, and against the King. Hence the triple death sentence.

The grisly, grotesque nature of the killing was explained in the severe language of the law with the intention that it should terrify the listeners and augment the misery of the man whose body was shortly to fulfil the role of lecture aid. When, later, the sentence ceased to be given in Latin, the use of the English equivalent did not change any of its meaning.

This barbaric vivisection was employed by the English for the execution of Scotsmen as late as the 18th century, and as given by Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough (1750-1818) the wording was as follows:

"You are to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged, but not till you are dead; for while still living, your body is to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burnt before your face; your head is then cut off, and your body divided into four quarters."

In earlier times the explicit words "your privy parts cut away and burnt before your eyes" were spoken, one priest in Tudor times being recorded as observing that as they had not been of much use to him on earth, they were unlikely to be of much use to him in heaven.

Teachers of history to children, while explaining the meaning of hanging, drawing and quartering, usually hide the horror by exploiting the ambiguity of "drawing", Apart from the words of Ellenborough quoted above, the original sentence in the Wallace case clearly distinguishes between the two types of "drawing", using "detrahatur" for drawing as a method of transport, and "devaletur" for disembowellment. (Hanging is "suspendatur", beheading is "decapitetur", and quartering is "decolletur".)

Now if you would like to watch the fBraveheart again, you will see that quite early in the proceedings, while the screen is filled by the sun-blocked torso of Gibson and nothing is seen below the waist (for he is fundamentally a modest man), his face gives a sudden little grimace. If you are quick you will catch it. That represents the emasculation.

The disembowelment which followed was extraordinary. and you cannot see a drop of blood anywhere, and it was only afterwards you may recall the camera's preoccupation with the long steel shaft with the small hook on its end implied to an inspired audience that this was inserted into his bowels via his anus to achieve the deed bloodlessly.

While this was a brutal way to die it has to be remembered that our Patriot was executed like others befpre and afterwards and there is no reason to thonl he was treated a more harsh e4xecution than others the English killed after a guilty verdict of treason, the thing with Sir William Wallace he was never an English subject, hence he committed no crime.

A simple google search will furnish you with many accounts of this and while I don't c;aom to have given you the 100% de facto event of the day I try my best to collate the events of this day in 1205, as I do with all my posts, so while I welcome coments, please be respectfull of my efforts.

There is a podcast from the English National Archives below that may interest some. https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/william-wallaces-rising-and-execution-and-edward-is-conquest-of-scotland/

[yesiamreallyshort]

[victusinveritas]

One final kiss before execution, 1953 : Julius and Ethel Rosenberg share one final kiss and sing "The Internationale" as they were being strapped to the electric chair.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's children, Michael, 10, and Robert, 6, reading the news about their parents in home of friends in Toms River, New Jersey. Their parents were executed on this day in 1953

A piece by Michael and Robert Meeropol (to avoid being in the public eye, the Rosenberg children changed their names) below the cut (it's from the NYT and paywalled, so fuck that).

(Link here if you want to read it at the NYT and you've got a subscription--I get one through my job and try to use it for good.) The Meeropol Brothers: Exonerate Our Mother, Ethel Rosenberg

OUR parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed on June 19, 1953, after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. That was the formal legal charge, but in the public’s mind they were executed for providing our archenemy, the Soviet Union, with the ability to destroy our country with atomic bombs. Theirs was the most sensational case of the McCarthy period.

Last month, the grand jury testimony of our uncle David Greenglass, who died last year, was made public, the latest in a trove of material released since 2008 after we and others filed a legal action. Back then, we concluded that our father was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, but not of atomic spying, and we maintain that neither of our parents deserved the death penalty.

The newly released 46-page transcript — along with previously released testimony and other records — demonstrates conclusively that our mother was prosecuted primarily for refusing to turn on our father. We now call on President Obama to acknowledge that Ethel Rosenberg was wrongly convicted and executed.

The evidence presented against Ethel at the trial, in March 1951, consisted mainly of testimony by her brother, David, and his wife, Ruth. They testified that in November 1944, Ethel helped Julius persuade Ruth to recruit David (an Army machinist working at the weapons installation in Los Alamos, N.M.) into Julius’s espionage ring. They testified that Ethel participated in a September 1945 meeting at which David gave a sketch to Julius of a cross-section of the bomb, and at which Ethel typed David’s handwritten notes explaining the diagram.

The record refutes these claims. David’s grand jury testimony, on Aug. 7, 1950, made no mention of any such meeting with Ethel, much less the typing.

Responding to questions about spying, David told the grand jury: “My sister has never spoken to me about this subject.” The transcript shows that David had no doubts about this: “I said before, and say it again, honestly, this is a fact: I never spoke to my sister about this at all.”

The new transcript affirms what we know from Ruth’s own grand jury testimony, on Aug. 3, 1950, in which she made no mention of a September meeting. While she said that David had passed information to a courier in New Mexico in June 1945, she asserted that they transferred no material to our father afterward. The very next day, Aug. 4, David told a prosecutor that he had given the cross-section sketch to Julius sometime that fall in New York City. Three days later, we now know, David repeated this story under oath, contradicting Ruth’s account. By the time of the trial, this story had grown into the Sept. 25 meeting at the Rosenbergs’ apartment.

Decades later, David, who served 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage, admitted to the New York Times reporter Sam Roberts that he had lied about his sister in an effort to protect his wife, though David refused to authorize the release of the grand jury transcript before his death. (Ruth, who was never charged, died in 2008.)

We believe that David and Ruth invented the Sept. 25 meeting to shift blame to our parents for leaking the bomb sketch. Our careful analysis of Soviet and American files suggests that Ruth had planned to share the materials with a K.G.B. agent (without any Rosenberg involvement) on Dec. 21, 1945. Soviet archives reveal that the materials arrived in Moscow six days later. Decryptions of Soviet cables by the National Security Agency reveal that the K.G.B. gave Ruth a code name and considered her a spy.

The flimsy case against our mother began after Julius’s arrest in July 1950. An assistant attorney general told the F.B.I. that there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Ethel, but that she could be used “as a lever against her husband.”

In February 1951, a month before the trial, a federal prosecutor told a congressional committee: “The case is not too strong against Mrs. Rosenberg. But for the purpose of acting as a deterrent, I think it is very important that she be convicted too, and given a stiff sentence.”

Even now, some observers insist that both Julius and Ethel recommended the recruitment of Ruth as a spy and that Ethel had knowledge of and agreed with her husband’s activities.

It is impossible to prove that someone played no role in a secret conspiracy. Yes, the evidence indicates that Ethel was at least generally aware of Julius’s activities. When Julius importuned Ruth to ask David to spy, Ethel encouraged her, according to Ruth. The K.G.B. files, however, tell a different story. They report that Ruth felt it was a “privilege” to be asked. They also note that rather than encouraging Ruth, Ethel urged caution. Assuming the K.G.B. files’ accuracy, this could indicate that Ethel, rather than Ruth, was the reluctant one, or it could have been part of Ethel’s effort to protect the secrecy of their work.

Other skeptics point to the Venona intercepts, intelligence cables from Soviet agents in the 1940s that were released in 1995. One snippet stated that “Liberal” — Julius’s code name — “and his wife” recommended Ruth. (Scholars mostly agree that the intercepts show that Julius was a spy, but don’t agree on the extent of Ethel’s involvement.)

We will never know what our parents told each other in private, but we are certain of this: The Greenglasses’ lies were necessary to obtain Ethel’s conviction; the K.G.B. did not give her a code name, and evidently did not consider her a spy; and the prosecution’s strategy was to use Ethel to coerce her husband to confession.

Shortly before he died in 2001, William P. Rogers, who was deputy attorney general of the United States at the time of our parents’ execution (and later secretary of state under President Richard M. Nixon), admitted to Mr. Roberts, who wrote a book about David, that the government’s objective was never to kill the Rosenbergs, but to get them to talk. He said of Ethel, “She called our bluff.” This statement shocks the conscience.

Our mother was not a spy. The government held her life hostage to coerce our father to talk, and when that failed, it extracted false statements to secure her wrongful execution. The apparent rationale for such action — that national security demanded it during a time of international crisis — has disturbing implications in post-9/11 America. It is never too late to correct an egregious injustice. We call on the government to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg.

Michael Meeropol­ is professor emeritus of economics at Western New England University and editor of “The Rosenberg Letters.” Robert Meeropol is the founder of the Rosenberg Fund for Children and author of “An Execution in the Family.” They are the authors of “We Are Your Sons.”

[scotianostra]

On a bright summer’s afternoon August 3oth 1820, a crowd of 20,000 people gathered on Glasgow Green to watch the execution of a Strathaven weaver, James “Purlie” Wilson.

Born in Strathaven, as a young man James was a stocking weaver. Some say that he was responsible for modifying the stocking frame to make a ‘purl’ stitch – leading to his nickname of ‘Purlie’ Wilson! James was a well-read man. He later became a gunsmith, repaired clocks and guns, reared pointer dogs, wrote poetry, and even practised medicine. James fought against poverty and injustice and was a freethinker on religious subjects.

In 1792 James joined the ‘Friends of the People’ and was the Strathaven delegate to the Association’s convention in 1794. After the Association folded James became a member of the ‘United Scotsmen’ before it, too, folded. Over subsequent years James continued to be a Radical. His house became the meeting place for those seeking reform.

As a respected older man and a lifelong Radical, James was the person local Radicals came to for advice. On 1 April 1820 they looked to him when they received copies of the Address calling for a general strike.

James directed that the Strathaven men be called to arms: ‘I am glad to hear that my countrymen are resolved to act like men. We are seeking nothing but the rights of their forefathers and liberty was not worth having is it was not worth fighting for’ Wilson’s house became the centre of activity. Local Radicals stopped work and began casting bullets and making cartridges from weavers’ weights and roof lead.

On 5 April they received word that they were to join a contingent of 5000 - 7000 radicals gathering on Cathkin Braes. The news came from James Shields, a Paisley weaver, sadly, Shields, seems to have been the unsuspecting victim of a Government spy, Robert Lees. A few miles out of Strathaven they were informed that the ‘fighting was over’ and the Glasgow Radicals had given up the unequal contest’ Convinced they had been betrayed, Wilson thought it futile to continue, this was the point that he left them wishing the company luck.

James Wilson had no sooner reached his house when he was arrested and charged with High Treason. He4 and the other Radicals arrested were to be tried at a court of ‘Oyer and Terminer’ an English legal procedure. This had been given powers in Scotland after the Act of Union to make judgements in trials of ‘treason’ and ‘misprision of treason’ (knowing someone intended to commit treason and failing to alert the authorities).

In July, Wilson was found guilty at Glasgow High Court on a count of, ‘Compassing to levy war against the King in order to compel him to change his measures’

The Jury unanimously recommended that the court show James mercy. When asked by the judge why he should not receive the death sentence, James responded: ‘…if I have attempted to free my country from political degradation – my conscience tells me that I have only done my duty’ The judge refused to consider clemency and sentenced James to death.

On 30 August, James was taken to be hanged at Glasgow Green. James was a popular figure and a crowd of 20,000 people gathered in protest. At 5 minutes to three he mounted the scaffold, when a tremendous shout, mixed with hissing, was set by the crowd, and cries of "Murder", and "He is a murdered man", were heard from all quarters.

After James was hanged, after the body stopped convulsing the executioner severed his head raised it and proclaimed "This is the head of a traitor".

Vehement cries of "It is false, he has bled for his country!", were heard from different quarters.

James was buried in a pauper’s grave in Glasgow’s High Church but, that night, his daughter and niece exhumed his body and had it carried back to Strathaven.

His remains were buried in the parish churchyard, yards from his home. In 1846 a monument to Wilson was erected in Strathaven.

[scotianostra]

On November 8th 1752, Seumas a’ Ghlinne / James of the Glen was hung at Cnap Chaolis Mhic Pharaig, near Ballachulish.

Seamus a’ Ghlinne mounted the gallows above the narrows at Ballaculish with the reproach of Psalm 35 for his persecutors:

"False witnesses rose; to my charge things I not knew they laid. They, to the spoiling of my soul, me ill for good repaid."

James of the Glen, or just James Stewart — had come there that day to die for the ambush murder of Colin Roy Campbell.

The victim was stock of Clan Campbell, one of the largest Highland clans and one whose loyalties to the Hanoverian kings were being richly rewarded. The Stewarts, who had backed the recent ill-fated Jacobite rebellion in favour of the exiled pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie, were in the opposite predicament.

Colin Campbell was said on that fatal May 14th to be en route to expel the Stewarts from the village of Duror so that Campbells could move in. But even Campbell’s everyday job of extracting resentful rents from estates repossessed from Jacobite sympathizers would have turned many a murderous eye his way.

Someone that day shot Colin Campbell in the back from wooded cover, then vanished, murderous eye and trigger finger and all, never to be never apprehended. So they got James Stewart to answer for it instead. This wasn’t a tragic case of well-intentioned police developing tunnel vision on the wrong suspect so much as repaying tit for tat in a family feud. The trial was held at the Campbells’ Inverary Castle. Its presiding judge was the Campbell alpha male, the Duke of Argyll. Eleven more Campbells sat on Stewart’s jury. But then, from the Campbells’ side, or London’s for that matter, what was to say that this one murder might not be the germ of a new rebellion if not ruthlessly answered?

Still, there was “not a shred of evidence,” says present-day Glasgow barrister John Macauley, “The whole thing from start to finish was a farce.”

James Stewart was, however, the foster father of a man who actually was suspected of firing the shot, Allan Breck Stewart, a former Jacobite soldier who had returned from exile in France to collect rents for the Stewarts. Known to have threatened the Campbells previously, Allan was also tried and condemned to death — but only in absentia, since he suspiciously fled to France immediately after the so-called Appin Murder.

Many years later, Robert Louis Stevenson would use this dramatic crime, and Al(l)an Breck’s flight to safety, in Kidnapped. “I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it,” Stevenson’s Alan says to the fictional protagonist in the novel, just after both have witnessed the murder.

And in reality, Alan too is thought by those who know the case to be clear of guilt in the matter. The Stewart family reputedly knew all along which of their number was Campbell’s real killer, but refused to give him up and kept the family secret for generations. It’s even said that that man had to be forcibly held down on execution day to prevent him giving himself up.

To judge by the most recent research, that man was likely Donald Stewart, the son of Stewart of Ballachulish and the best shot among a group of several young hotheads who resolved together to slay the Campbells’ hated Factor. The conspiracy also goes as the reason — or at least excuse — for keeping Donald silent, since in giving himself up he might see all four of them to the gallows. The late Lee Holcombe makes a comprehensive case for Donald Stewart as the gunman in the 2004 book Ancient Animosity: The Appin Murder and the End of Scottish Rebellion; Donald Stewart was also fingered publicly in 2001 by a matriarch of the Stewarts of Appin, though others of her family have not publicly confirmed that that’s the secret name.

James Stewart’s decaying corpse remained gibbeted on the spot of his execution for 18 months as illustrated in the pic by the late Andrew Hillhouse, after, a rotting warning to the Stewarts or any late Jacobites. In 1754, a local man called “Daft Macphee” finally tore down the gallows and threw it into Loch Linnhe … but its former position overlooking the modern Ballachulish Bridge is still marked by a mossy stone monument to James of the Glen, “executed on this spot Nov. 8th 1752 for a crime of which he was not guilty.”

The image was commissioned as a book cover for “Grass Will Not Grow on My Grave” by Mary McGrigor. The image was also used on a descriptive panel at the site of James’ execution at Ballachulish. If you stop before the bridge (travelling north) and climb up the footpath where the bridge begins, you will see it.

[scotianostra]

On May 11th 1685 the ‘Solway Martyrs’, Margaret MacLaghlin* and Margaret Wilson were put to death.

*Note the elder woman's name has several different spellings, depending on the source.

One of the saddest events at a time when there was no shortage of brutality, The Killing Time, is a part of our history that is a blight on our nation, a shameful period where many died because of their religious beliefs.

The Wigtown Martyrs or Solway Martyrs, Margaret MacLaghlin (in her 60s) and Margaret Wilson (in her 20s) were Scottish Covenanters who were executed by Scottish Episcopalians at Wigtown,, by tying them to stakes on the town's mudflats and allowing them to drown with the rising tide.

Margaret MacLaghlin and Margaret Willson were sentenced to be tied to stakes in the tidal channel of the River Bladnoch near its entrance to Wigtown Bay to be drowned by the incoming tide. Their "crime" was they refused to take an oath of loyalty to Charles II that acknowledged his authority on everything, including religious matters.

The ploy was that the younger woman might be persuaded to change her mind after watching the older woman drown. The strategy failed and both died. This execution was carried out by dragoons under the command of Major Windram in the presence of Sir Robert Grierson of Lag who held the King's Commission to suppress the rebels in the South West.

The soldiers first went to MacLaghlin and give her the chance to pray for the King, but she refused. Some men were incensed at the impudence of the old woman, and one cursed and told the soldiers to, “Let her gang to hell”. As the tidal race worked it’s way higher up the body of old Margaret, one of the town soldiers took his halberd and held it over her throat, bringing her to a quicker end. A reprieve had been sent from Edinburgh but never reached Wigtown.

It was not only women who died, William Johnstone, John Milroy and George Walker were hanged in Wigtown the same year, for refusal to take the oath, but Margaret Wilson, due to her young age has become the most famous of the martyrs and is the subject of a famous painting by the English artist John Everett Millais called The Martyr of Solway. The stake out on the Solway Firth at Wigton is replica set as a memorial to the women, there is also a memorial in the graveyard at The Kirk of the Holy Rude at Stirling.

[scotianostra]

The second martyr, and saint of the day, John Ogilvie was executed in Glasgow for saying Mass and for treason on March 10th 1615.

We know a lot more about John Ogilvie than we do about St Kessog, he was born in 1579 at Drumnakeith, Banffshire he belonged to Scottish nobility, his father was treasurer to Mary Queen of Scots, and their family could be traced to King William.

In 1596, at age seventeen he was received into the Church at Louvain in Belgium. Later John attended a variety of Catholic educational institutions, and eventually he sought admission into the Jesuits. He was ordained at Paris in 1610 then moved around a little bit in Scotland, London then back to Paris, finally returning to Scotland in 1613 disguised as a horse trader named John Watson, where he began to preach in secret, celebrating Mass clandestinely in private homes

John’s work was quite successful in bring back many people to the Faith. Some time later he was betrayed by one posing as a Catholic. After his arrest he was initially treated well then was tortured in prison including the ‘watching’ - Ogilvie was kept awake for eight days and nine nights continuously after refusing to reveal the names of other Catholics.

After three trials, John was convicted of high treason because he converted Protestants to the Catholic Faith as well as denied the king’s spiritual jurisdiction by upholding the Pope’s spiritual primacy and condemning the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.

Sentenced to death, the courageous priest was hanged at Glasgow Cross in 1615 at the age of thirty-six. Ogilvie’s last words were ‘If there be here any hidden Catholics, let them pray for me but the prayers of heretics I will not have.'

As he was pushed to his death he threw his concealed rosary out into the crowd. According to legend, one of his enemies caught it and subsequently became a devout, lifelong Catholic.

After his execution Ogilvie’s followers were rounded up and put in jail. They suffered heavy fines and imprisonment, but none received the death penalty.

I’ll just add a wee bit verse at the end here, from a Rabbie Burns poem, Man was made to mourn. I feel it is important as even to this day torture and war, religious divides and hatred is all too common in this world…………..

Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!