Word: spenkelink
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...Spenkelink was the first person involuntarily executed in the U.S. since 1967,* and the reactions were immediate. Outside Spenkelink's cell, the 130 other condemned men on Florida's death row shouted and pounded on cell bars. Some 70 demonstrators gathered in the warm spring sun on a field near the prison, chanting "Death row must go" and singing "We shall overcome...
...Spenkelink's death intensified the national debate that has long raged over whether capital punishment deters crime and should be retained or is a cruel and unfair form of revenge that ought to be abolished. Sociologists have never definitively answered the question, but the views of the American public, aroused by violent crime, seem clear: polls show that nearly two-thirds of the people favor capital punishment. Accordingly, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 against the arbitrary way in which capital punishment was imposed, 34 states have rewritten their death penalty laws to conform with the court...
...thus with a sense of urgency that many of the leading opponents of capital punishment assembled in Florida last week to stage a last-minute campaign for the hapless Spenkelink. Henry Schwarzschild of the American Civil Liberties Union warned of a "constitutional, legal and political disaster that will shock and appall the rest of the world." Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a late addition to Spenkelink's defense team, called the occasion "a tragic moment in American history" and gibed, "If you work at city hall you get voluntary manslaughter," a caustic reference to the lenient verdict against...
...second warrant was for John Arthur Spenkelink, a moody loner who had been in and out of jail since childhood. Spenkelink's troubles began early; at twelve he discovered the body of his alcoholic father, who had committed suicide in the front seat of his truck in Buena Park, Calif. Two years later, Spenkelink was arrested for the first time, for driving a stolen car. There followed arrests for disturbing the peace, for burglary and for armed robbery. Stints in reform schools were to no avail. When he married briefly at 18, his probation officer could find only...
...while Spenkelink was serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery, he walked away from the minimum-security Slack Canyon Conservation Camp near Big Sur. Driving through Nebraska, he picked up a hitchhiker, Joe Szymankiewicz, 43, an Ohio parole violator who had spent 16 years behind bars for forgery, burglary, theft and other crimes. For several weeks they roamed the country, ending up on Feb. 3, 1973, in Room 4 of the Ponce de Leon Motel in Tallahassee. Next morning, a maid discovered Szymankiewicz dead in bed. He had been bludgeoned and shot twice...