“I’ll get around to it.”
“That’s what you keep saying.” Wilbanks opened the door, marched through, and slammed it behind him.
The appeal was filed, and John Wilbanks, to his knowledge, was not fired, nor was he paid. It was one of the thinnest filings ever received by the Mississippi Supreme Court in a murder case, and in response the State answered fully. Which was to say, with another thin brief. There was simply nothing wrong with the trial, and the defendant claimed no prejudicial errors. For a court often criticized for its glacier-like pace, the justices were reluctant to affirm so quickly in such a notorious case. Instead, they instructed their clerk to reshuffle the docket and set the Banning matter for oral argument for later in the spring. John Wilbanks informed the clerk that he had not requested oral argument and would not participate in one. He had nothing to argue.
April 8 came and went with no execution. By then word had filtered through the Tea Shoppe that delays were in the works and no firm date had been set, so the town was not counting the days. Instead, as spring arrived, the gossip around the town and county ventured away from Pete Banning and turned to the most important aspect of life, the planting of cotton. The fields were plowed and tilled and prepped for the seed, and the weather was watched intently. The farmers studied the skies as they marked their calendars. Plant too early, say in late March, and heavy rains could wash away the seed. Plant too late, say by the first of May, and the crop would be off to a bad start and run the risk of being flooded come October. Farming, as always, was an annual crapshoot.
Buford Provine, the Bannings’ longtime foreman, began stopping by the jail each morning for a cigarette with Pete. They usually met outdoors behind the jail, with Buford leaning against a tree while Pete stretched his legs on the other side of the eight-foot chain-link fence. He was in the “yard,” a small square dirt patch sometimes used by the inmates for fresh air. It was also used for visitation and conferences with lawyers. Anything to get outside the jail.
On April 9, the day after he was supposed to die, Pete and Buford discussed the almanacs and forecasts from the weather service and made the decision to plant the seeds as soon as possible. As Buford drove away from the jail, Pete watched his truck disappear. He was pleased with their decision to plant, but he also knew that he would not be around for the harvest.
The day before he was to graduate from Vanderbilt, Joel packed his possessions into two duffel bags and left Nashville. He took the train to D.C. and found Stella in Georgetown. She was delighted to see him and claimed to be quite happy with her job, that of “practically raising three children.” Her guest cottage was too small for another boarder, and besides her boss did not want anyone else living there. Joel found a room in a flophouse near Dupont Circle and got a job as a waiter in an upscale restaurant. He and Stella explored the city as much as her job would allow, and they reveled in being around large numbers of people who had no idea where they were from. In long letters home they explained to Aunt Florry and to their father that they had summer jobs in D.C. and life was okay. More about classes later.
On June 4, the Mississippi Supreme Court, without oral argument, unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence of Pete Banning, and remanded the case back to Judge Oswalt. A week later, he set the execution thirty days away, on Thursday, July 10.
There were no more appeals.
Chapter 18
Prior to 1940, Mississippi executed its criminals by hanging, which at that time was the preferred method throughout the country. In some states the killings were done quietly with little fanfare, but in others they were public events. Tough politicians in Mississippi firmly believed that showing the people what could happen if they stepped too far out of line was an effective means of controlling crime, so capital punishment became a show in most instances. Local sheriffs made the decisions, and as a general rule white defendants were hanged in private while black ones were put on display.
Between 1818 and 1940, the state hanged eight hundred people, 80 percent of whom were black. Those, of course, were the judicial hangings for rapists and murderers who had been processed through the courts. During that same period of time, approximately six hundred black men were lynched by mobs operating outside the legal system and thoroughly immune from any of its repercussions.
The state prison was named after its first warden, Jim Parchman. It was a large cotton plantation covering eight thousand acres in Sunflower County, in the heart of the Delta. The people there did not want their home to be known as the “death county,” and they had politicians with clout. As a result, hangings took place in the counties where the crimes were committed. There were no fixed gallows, no trained executioners, no standard procedures, no protocol. It wasn’t that complicated, just secure a rope around the man’s neck and watch him drop. The locals built the frames, crossbeams, and trapdoors, and the sheriffs were in charge of stringing up the condemned as the crowds looked on.
Hanging was quick and efficient, but there were problems. In 1932, a white man named Guy Fairley was hanged but something went wrong. His neck didn’t break as planned, and he flailed about choking, bleeding, screaming, and taking much too long to die. His death was widely reported and prompted talk of reform. In 1937, a white man named Tray Samson dropped through the trapdoor and died instantly when his head snapped completely off and rolled toward the sheriff. A photographer was there, and though no newspaper would run the photo it made the rounds anyway.
In 1940, the state legislature addressed the problem. A compromise was reached when it was agreed that the state would stop hanging and move to the more modern method of electrocution. And since there was too much opposition to killing the defendants at Parchman, the state decided to construct a portable electric chair that could easily be moved from county to county. Impressed with their ingenuity, the legislators quickly passed this into law. Some problems arose when it was realized that no one in the country had ever used a portable electric chair. And, for a while anyway, no reputable electrical contractor wanted to touch this unique and clever idea.
Finally, a company in Memphis stepped forward and designed the first portable electric chair in history. It came with six hundred feet of high-tension cables, a switchboard, its own generator, helmet straps, and electrodes designed from specs borrowed from states with stationary electric chairs. The entire unit was carried from county to county in a large silver truck specially designed for such occasions.
The new state executioner was a sleazy character named Jimmy Thompson who had just been paroled from Parchman, where he had served time for armed robbery. In addition to being an ex-con, he was an ex-sailor, ex-marine, ex — carnival showboat, ex-hypnotist, and frequent drunkard. He got the job through political patronage — he personally knew the governor. He was paid $100 per execution, plus expenses.
Thompson loved cameras and was always available for interviews. He arrived early to each site, displayed his portable chair and its switchboard, and posed for photos with the locals. After his first execution, he told a newspaper the defendant died “with tears in his eyes for the efficient care I took to give him a good clean burning.” The deceased, a black man named Willie Mae Bragg, who’d been convicted of killing his wife, was photographed being strapped in by deputies and then dying from electrocution. The executions were not open to the public, but there were always plenty of witnesses.