Boise, Idaho – It’s been 17 years since Idaho last executed a prisoner. Friday morning convicted murderer Paul Ezra Rhoades is slated to die by lethal injection. Idaho has a long history with capital punishment unlike Michigan which abolished the death penalty in 1846. Adam Cotterell takes us to one place in Idaho that’s had a history with execution.
Amber Beierle opens an iron door with a key the size of her hand. Beierle manages Idaho’s historic old penitentiary. Behind this door is the room where Idaho hanged its last man.
Amber Beierle “that is where the rope would have been hanging and then there’s a lever that releases the trap door.”
This room was built in 1954 with the expectation of handling many executions. It saw only one; Raymond Snowden in 1957. Snowden was convicted of stabbing a woman multiple times. Thirteen months passed between his arrest and execution. Compare that to Idaho today where Paul Rhoades has been on death row for 24 years. Raymond Snowden spent his year on death row looking at the door to the room where he would die. It was ten feet in front of his cell.
Amber Beierle “So a very short trip from his cell over to the gallows.”
As midnight approached on October 17th 1957 guards strapped Snowden to a gurney and carried him that ten feet to the execution chamber.
Amber Beierle “They did ask Raymond Snowden if he had any last words. His response to that was yes I do but I don’t know how to say it.”
They bound his hands and feet.
Amber Beierle “And then of course a black hood would have been placed over his head as well.”
Prison officials had a problem every time a hanging came up over those 50 plus years… lack of experience. It’s an issue today. Idaho has only performed one lethal injection and that was 17 years ago. Paul Rhoades defense team has made that the focus of their appeals. So far those appeals have been denied…. For Snowden, Idaho brought in an experienced executioner from out of state. But something went wrong.
Amber Beierle “Probably an improperly tied knot. It took him about 15 minutes to pass away.”
Hanging was the method used for most of Idaho’s history. The prison held a double hanging outside the walls in 1951 in what is now the Idaho Botanical Gardens. Before that Idaho executed six men inside the walls. Prior to the 20th century county sheriffs in Idaho hanged 16 men. The federal government held one execution. After 1957 Idaho didn’t execute anyone for 37 years.
Stuart Banner “The death penalty was becoming less and less popular in the 50s and 60s.”
Stuart Banner teaches law at the University of California at Los Angeles. He’s written several books on legal history including The Death Penalty in American History. Banner says the anti-death penalty movement showed up in state legislatures. Alaska and Hawaii banned capital punishment in 1957, Vermont in 64, West Virginia and Iowa in 1965. But the movement was most visible in the courts where constitutional challenges tied up executions. By 1967 executions in the U.S. had stopped. The Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that state death penalty laws were unconstitutional under the 8th amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Stuart Banner “The court said that if states wanted to have the death penalty they’d have to have some principled way to decide who deserved the death penalty and who didn’t.”
States quickly rewrote death penalty laws including Idaho in 1973. But there were no executions in the U.S. for ten years until the Supreme Court ruled those state laws were constitutional in 1976. But Banner says by then the movement to abolish the death penalty had lost steam.
Stuart Banner “The 1972 Supreme Court decision finding it unconstitutional had the effect of galvanizing support for the death penalty.”
Idaho began handing out death sentences again. There are 15 people on death row now including Paul Rhoades. And in the post 1976 world Idaho death row inmates can spend decades waiting for their sentences to be carried out. Before that the average time was less than a year. Ginny Hatch says the legal system changed the way capital punishment gets handled. She teaches criminal justice at Boise State University. She says capital cases must be looked at through a unique legal lens.
Ginny Hatch “It all comes down to one thing, we’re scared to death of convicting an innocent person. And that’s why we have all these procedural safeguards in place. Nobody wants to be the judge who executes an innocent person.”
Hatch says this has led in many cases to an indefinite appeals process. Paul Rhoades has exhausted his appeals after 24 years. But there are people on Idaho’s death row who have been there longer. Lacey Sivak received his death sentence in 1981. But Hatch says in the next few years Idaho may actually see more executions. Other death row inmates are in a similar legal place as Paul Ezra Rhoades. They’ve nearly exhausted their appeals.