Rainey Bethea - Trial, Appeal, and Petition For Habeas Corpus

Trial, Appeal, and Petition For Habeas Corpus

The judge of the Daviess Circuit Court ordered the sheriff to transport Bethea to the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, fearing a lynch mob. While being transferred, Bethea made his first confession, admitting that he had raped Edwards and strangled her to death. Bethea also lamented the fact that he had made a mistake by leaving his ring at the crime scene.

Once incarcerated at the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, Bethea made a second confession, this time before Robert M. Morton, a notary public, and George H. Koper, a reporter for The Courier-Journal. Officials requested the presence of the notary and the reporter anticipating that Bethea, or someone else, might accuse them of coercing his confession.

On June 12, 1936, Bethea made a third confession and told the captain of the guards where he had hidden the jewelry. Owensboro police searched a barn in Owensboro and found the jewelry, where Bethea said he had left it.

Under Kentucky law, the grand jury could not convene until June 22, and the prosecutor decided to charge Bethea solely with rape. The reason was, under the statutes then in force, if a punishment of death was given for murder and robbery, it was to be carried out by electrocution at the state penitentiary in Eddyville; however, rape could be punished by public hanging in the county seat where the crime occurred. To avoid a potential legal dilemma as to whether Bethea would be hanged or electrocuted, the prosecutor elected to charge Bethea only with the crime of rape. Bethea was never charged with the remaining crimes of theft, robbery, burglary, or murder. After one hour and forty minutes, the grand jury returned an indictment, charging Bethea with rape.

On June 25, 1936, officers returned Bethea to Owensboro for the trial. Bethea was unhelpful to his state-appointed attorneys, lead defense attorney and early anti-death penalty advocate William W. "Bill" Kirtley, William L. Wilson, Carroll Byron, and C. W. Wells, Jr. He said that a Clyde Maddox would provide an alibi, but Maddox claimed he did not even know Bethea. In the end, they subpoenaed four witnesses: Maddox, Ladd Moorman, Willie Johnson (whom Bethea had implicated as an accomplice in his second confession) and Allen McDaniel. Only the first three were served, because the sheriff's office could not find a person named Allen McDaniel.

On the night before the trial, Bethea announced to his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty, and he did so the next day at the start of the trial. The prosecutor, who was asking for the death penalty, still presented the state's case to the jury, since the jury would decide the sentence. The first twelve of 111 people called for jury duty were selected.

During his opening statement, Commonwealth's Attorney Herman Birkhead said, "This is one of the most dastardly, beastly, cowardly crimes ever committed in Daviess County. Justice demands and the Commonwealth will ask and expect a verdict of the death penalty by hanging."

After questioning 21 witnesses, the prosecution closed its case. The defense did not call any witnesses or cross-examine the witnesses who testified for the prosecution. After a closing statement by the prosecutor, the judge instructed the jury that since Bethea had pled guilty, their only task was to "...fix his punishment, at confinement in the penitentiary for not less than ten years nor more than twenty years, or at death." After only four and one-half minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a sentence: death by hanging. Bethea was then quickly removed from the courthouse and returned to the Jefferson County Jail.

Back in Louisville, Bethea acquired five new black lawyers - Charles Ewbank Tucker, Stephen A. Burnley, Charles W. Anderson, Jr., Harry E. Bonaparte, and R. Everett Ray. They worked pro bono to challenge the sentence, something they saw as their ethical duty for the indigent defendant. On July 10, 1936, they filed a motion for a new trial. The judge summarily denied this on the grounds that under Section 273 of the Kentucky Code of Practice in Criminal Cases, a motion for a new trial had to have been received before the end of the court's term, which had ended on July 4, 1936.

They then attempted to appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which was also not in session. On July 29, 1936, Justice Gus Thomas returned to Frankfort where he heard the oral motion. Justice Thomas refused to permit the appeal to be filed on the grounds that the trial court record was incomplete, which only included the judge's ruling. Although it may seem that Bethea's lawyers were incompetent, they knew the appeal would be denied, and this was only a formality in order to exhaust state court remedies before they filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in a federal court.

Once Justice Thomas denied the motion to file a belated appeal, Bethea's attorneys filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville. A hearing was held on August 5, 1936 at the Federal Building in Louisville before United States District Judge Elwood Hamilton. During the hearing, Bethea claimed that he had not wanted to plead guilty but had been forced to by his lawyers, and that he had wanted to subpoena three witnesses to testify on his behalf, but the lawyers had also not done this. Bethea also claimed that his five confessions had been made under duress and that when he signed one of them, he did not know what he was signing. The Commonwealth brought several witnesses to refute these claims. Judge Hamilton denied the habeas corpus petition and ruled that the hanging could proceed.