History
Four methods have been used historically for executions. Until slightly before California was admitted into the Union, executions were carried by firing squad. Upon admission, the state adopted hanging as the method of choice.
The penal code was modified on February 14, 1872, to state that hangings were to take place inside the confines of the county jail or other private places. The only people allowed to be present were the sheriff of the county, a physician, the District Attorney of the county, who would select at least 12 "reputable citizens." No more than two "ministers of the gospel" and no more than five people selected by the condemned could also be present.
Executions were moved to the state level in 1889 when the law was modified so that hangings would take place in one of the State Prisons—San Quentin State Prison and Folsom State Prison. According to the California Department of Corrections, although there was no law providing which prison was chosen by the trial judge, it was customary for recidivists to be sent to Folsom. Under these new laws, the first execution at San Quentin was Jose Gabriel on March 3, 1893, for murder. The first hanging at Folsom was Chin Hane, also for murder, on December 13, 1895. A total of 215 inmates were hanged at San Quentin and a total of 93 were hanged at Folsom.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In California
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)