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But the Soviet archives provide strong evidence that while Ethel was never a formal agent, she not only knew of Julius’s work but aided him at times, including in the recruitment of her brother and sister-in-law.Īnne Sebba’s new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy,” comes in the wake of the public release of the last of the grand jury testimony in the case, that of David Greenglass, after his death in 2014. This has led some, including her two sons, to continue to insist on Ethel’s innocence and seek her exoneration.

Even more damningly, Ethel was mercilessly used as a pawn by the government to force Julius to confess. Her brother’s key testimony against her - that she typed some of the documents he provided to Julius - was a lie, as he later admitted, meant to deflect attention from his own wife’s involvement. Regarding Ethel, the case has always been muddied by two significant facts. Over time, research by scholars and the release of once-classified documents, first in America and then in the former Soviet Union, have proved that Julius was, in fact, guilty of running an espionage network intent on stealing the secrets of the Manhattan Project among other defense programs, though he did not provide the most significant information that led to the Soviet bomb. Julius, he testified in court, was his handler Ethel, Julius’s accomplice. Ethel’s own younger brother David Greenglass admitted to spying at Los Alamos for the Russians. In left and liberal circles, how one stood on the Rosenberg case became not just a proxy for one’s views on Communism and the Soviet Union but also, like the Dreyfus case in France a half-century earlier, instantly defined who one was. Though they took the Fifth regarding their Communist Party affiliation, they insisted that they were being persecuted for their radical political views. To the very end, the Rosenbergs protested their innocence. They remain the only individuals put to death for peacetime espionage in American history and most everyone agrees neither should have been killed.
#Last person executed for espionage in the us series
The couple were quickly convicted, sentenced to death and, after two years of international protest and a series of failed appeals, executed in June 1953. Mao Zedong had just declared the People’s Republic of China. atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year earlier, the Soviet Union had unexpectedly tested its first nuclear bomb, a mere four years after the U.S. The young couple were arrested in 1950 for atomic espionage. 265.Few trials in American history can match that of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for its sensationalism. Hearings, Ninety-second Congress, second session. ^ United States Congress House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee No.^ "Mary Latham Marries an Older Man – And Regrets It - New England Historical Society"."Early American Criminals: The Odd Couple of William Huggins and John Mansfield". Tattered Fabric: Fall River's Lizzie Borden. ^ "Bathsheba Spooner, Hannah Piggen, and Rachel Wall".The New Latino Studies Reader: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective. Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, p. Legal Executions in California: A Comprehensive Registry, 1851–2005. ^ Berry, Irene O'Hare, Sheila and Silva, Jesse (2006).Eternity at the End of a Rope: Executions, Lynchings and Vigilante Justice in Texas, 1819-1923. ^ "Alabama Negro To Die For Night Burglary".^ "First Burglar Goes To Chair Under New Death Penalty Law".^ "Alabama executes Negro for burglary".^ "Negro Is First To Die For Night Burglary".The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber.
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Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore.

^ "San Quentin Gas Chamber Claims Life of Billy Monk".Coates – Confidential File, April 27, 1960". ^ Supreme Court to hear case on death penalty restriction, Los Angeles Times, David G.Capital punishment in the United States.Stealing, treason, and conduct unbecoming a slaveĪaron Dwight Stevens and Albert Hazlett įrom 1930 to 1967, 3859 criminals were executed, sorted in the following table: CrimeĪggravated assault by a life-term prisoner George Hughes, George Smith, and Asbury Hughes Ģ1 (George Hughes), 30 (George Smith) and 22 (Asbury Hughes) Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France ( Firing squad) List of last persons to be executed for a crime other than murder Crime 1 List of last persons to be executed for a crime other than murder.
