“LEGAL EXECUTIONS BY THE UNITED STATES MILITARY – – A Complete Record, 1942 – 1961”, byR. Michael Wilson. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers; 2022, 258 pages, sc; $28.95. Visit,www.mcfarlandpub.com.Yes, 160 times an American son, father, uncle, brother, neighbor sentenced to die met hisexecutioner, but more often the sentence was commuted to prison or vacated. The manner ofdeath was by musketry (firing squad), or by hanging, and the procedures for conducting eitherexecution were dictated in precise detail by military documents and orders. The crimes whichresulted in an execution were limited to the most heinous: rape, murder, and the onedeliberate desertion. Pages 4 and 5 of the Introduction describe in detail the procedures forconducting executions. All are officially adopted, formally recognized, and faithfully followed —
see “Procedure for Military Executions, War Department Pamphlet 27 – 4”.
On a personal note of transparency, this reviewer, upon retirement from college and graduateschool instruction, chose post-employment work as junior and high school teacher with theCalifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation at San Quentin State Prison on thenorthern shore of San Francisco Bay. Then, promoted to Supervisor of Recreation for 6,000inmates, I often found myself among the 750 condemned, once, or twice a week deliveringsports equipment and recreational supplies to six small open-air yards, in addition to chairingthe Death Row Movie Committee. Then, as today, two thoughts haunt me: one from RecreationInmate Clerk, Q. Tham, a lifer, “All they needed after being born was being wanted, being loved,and played with as little boys, respected as young individuals with purpose leading to authenticidentities. Armed with those, and not guns, not a one would have killed”. Inmate Clerk, Orlando‘Duck’, my other clerk, also a lifer, but fortunately recently paroled, said, “Look, coach, neverforget that not one of those guys at the age of three or four said, ‘I can hardly wait to grow upto rape and kill.”Readers, I don’t know why, but I thought you should know the above about your reviewer whoforced himself to tackle R. Michael Wilson tough book. Ultimately, it boils down to this: ofcourse, you don’t need any help making up your own mind about capital punishment.Nonetheless, how does one dismiss R. Michael Wilson’s reverent, heartfelt-genuflectingdedication of his emotional-provoking book, “To those most often forgotten, the victims.”?Yet, some of the nicest men I have known, I met as my students and athletes at San Quentin, a
few on Death Row . . . . .
