On this date in 1867, Burton C. Mossman, Old West Lawman and rancher is born in Aurora, Illinois.

Little is known about Mossman’s childhood in Illinois, though he apparently learned to be self-reliant and resourceful at a young age. When he was 21, Mossman left home and moved to Mexico, where he quickly began proving himself one of the most canny and successful ranchers in the territory. By age 30, he not only had his own spread in New Mexico, but was also the superintendent of a two-million-acre ranch in northern Arizona running 60,000 cattle. As the size of the southwestern cattle industry increased, cattle rustlers began to take advantage of the lack of surveillance on the isolated ranges to steal stock. In 1901, the territory of Arizona responded by organizing a ranger force to rid the region of rustlers and other outlaws. The governor of Arizona convinced Mossman to sign on as the first captain of the Arizona Rangers.

Mossman was suited to the task. Courageous and skilled with a pistol, he had a knack for surprising rustlers while they were still in possession of stolen cattle, freshly butchered beef, green hides, and other incriminating evidence. Though he could use violence to good effect when needed, Mossman preferred to trick his quarry into giving up peacefully when possible. In one instance, Mossman rode south alone in pursuit of the multiple-murderer Agostine Chacon, who had fled to Mexico. Clearly out of his jurisdiction, Mossman had to act with finesse. With the assistance of Burt Alvard, an outlaw turned lawman, Mossman convinced Chacon that he and Alvard were also outlaws and would help him steal several top horses from a ranch in southern Arizona. When the men crossed the border into Arizona, Mossman revealed his true identity and arrested Chacon, who was later hanged.

The Chacon arrest was a typical example of Mossman’s approach to dealing with Arizona rustlers and outlaws. “If they come along easy, everything will be all right,” he once explained. “If they don’t, well, I just guess we can make pretty short work of them… Some of them will object, of course. They’ll probably try a little gunplay as a bluff, but I shoot fairly well myself, and the boys who back me up are handy enough with guns. Any rustler who wants to yank on the rope and kick up trouble will find he’s up against it.” After a long and adventurous career with the Arizona Rangers, Mossman eventually returned to the more peaceful life of a rancher. By the time he retired from ranching in 1944, he had business interests in cattle operations from Mexico to Montana, and more than a million cattle wore his brand. He lived out the remainder of his life at his comfortable ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, and died in 1956 at the age of 89.

On this date in 1927, the first women’s federal prison opens in Alderson, West Virginia. All women serving federal sentences of more than a year were to be brought here. Run by Dr. Mary B. Harris, the prison’s buildings, each named after social reformers, sat atop 500 acres. One judge described the prison as a “fashionable boarding school.” In some respects the judge was correct: The overriding purpose of the prison was to reform the inmates, not punish them. The prisoners farmed the land and performed office work in order to learn how to type and file. They also cooked and canned vegetables and fruits. Other women’s prisons had similar ideals. At Bedford Hills in New York, there were no fences, and the inmates lived in cottages equipped with their own kitchen and garden. The prisoners were even given singing lessons. Reform efforts had a good chance for success since the women sent to these prisons were far from hardened criminals. At the Federal Industrial Institution, the vast majority of the women were imprisoned for drug and alcohol charges imposed during the Prohibition era.

On this date in 1992, a jury of 10 whites, one Hispanic, and one Filipina in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquits four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier.

The announcement of the verdict, which enraged the black community, prompted widespread rioting throughout much of the sprawling city. It wasn’t until three days later that the arson and looting finally ended. Immediately after the verdict was announced that afternoon, protestors took to the streets, engaging in random acts of violence. At the corner of Florence and Normandie streets, Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, was dragged from his truck and severely beaten by several angry rioters. A helicopter crew caught the incident on camera and broadcast it live on local television. Viewers saw first-hand that the police, woefully unprepared, were unwilling—or unable—to enforce the law in certain neighborhoods of the city.

As it became evident that breaking the law in much of South Central Los Angeles would yield little, if any, consequences, opportunistic rioters came out in full force on the night of April 29, burning retail establishments all over the area. Police still had no control of the situation the following day. Thousands of people packed the streets and began looting stores. Korean-owned businesses were targeted in particular. For most, the looting was simply a crime of opportunity rather than any political expression.

The acquitted police officers were later convicted of violating Rodney King’s civil rights in a federal court trial. Reginald Denny’s attackers were identified through the helicopter videotape, arrested, and convicted of assault and battery. However, the jury declined to convict on attempted murder charges, apparently due to the defense’s argument that the defendants had only fallen prey to uncontrollable mob rage.

On this date in 1789, three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty is seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate. Captain William Bligh and 18 of his loyal supporters were set adrift in a small, open boat, and the Bounty set course for Tubuai south of Tahiti.

In December 1787, the Bounty left England for Tahiti in the South Pacific, where it was to collect a cargo of breadfruit saplings to transport to the West Indies. There, the breadfruit would serve as food for slaves. After a 10-month journey, the Bounty arrived in Tahiti in October 1788 and remained there for more than five months. On Tahiti, the crew enjoyed an idyllic life, reveling in the comfortable climate, lush surroundings, and the famous hospitality of the Tahitians. Fletcher Christian fell in love with a Tahitian woman named Mauatua.

On April 4, 1789, the Bounty departed Tahiti with its store of breadfruit saplings. On April 28, near the island of Tonga, Christian and 25 petty officers and seamen seized the ship. Bligh, who eventually would fall prey to a total of three mutinies in his career, was an oppressive commander and insulted those under him. By setting him adrift in an overcrowded 23-foot-long boat in the middle of the Pacific, Christian and his conspirators had apparently handed him a death sentence. By remarkable seamanship, however, Bligh and his men reached Timor in the East Indies on June 14, 1789, after a voyage of about 3,600 miles. Bligh returned to England and soon sailed again to Tahiti, from where he successfully transported breadfruit trees to the West Indies.

Meanwhile, Christian and his men attempted to establish themselves on the island of Tubuai. Unsuccessful in their colonizing effort, the Bounty sailed north to Tahiti, and 16 crewmen decided to stay there, despite the risk of capture by British authorities. Christian and eight others, together with six Tahitian men, a dozen Tahitian women, and a child, decided to search the South Pacific for a safe haven. In January 1790, the Bounty settled on Pitcairn Island, an isolated and uninhabited volcanic island more than 1,000 miles east of Tahiti. The mutineers who remained on Tahiti were captured and taken back to England where three were hanged. A British ship searched for Christian and the others but did not find them.

In 1808, an American whaling vessel was drawn to Pitcairn by smoke from a cooking fire. The Americans discovered a community of children and women led by John Adams, the sole survivor of the original nine mutineers. According to Adams, after settling on Pitcairn the colonists had stripped and burned the Bounty, and internal strife and sickness had led to the death of Fletcher and all the men but him. In 1825, a British ship arrived and formally granted Adams amnesty, and he served as patriarch of the Pitcairn community until his death in 1829.

In 1831, the Pitcairn islanders were resettled on Tahiti, but unsatisfied with life there they soon returned to their native island. In 1838, the Pitcairn Islands, which includes three nearby uninhabited islands, was incorporated into the British Empire. By 1855, Pitcairn’s population had grown to nearly 200, and the two-square-mile island could not sustain its residents. In 1856, the islanders were removed to Norfolk Island, a former penal colony nearly 4,000 miles to the west. However, less than two years later, 17 of the islanders returned to Pitcairn, followed by more families in 1864. Today, around 40 people live on Pitcairn Island, and all but a handful are descendants of the Bounty mutineers. About a thousand residents of Norfolk Island (half its population) trace their lineage from Fletcher Christian and the eight other Englishmen.

On this date in 1997, Andrew Cunanan kills Jeffrey Trail by beating him to death with a claw hammer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Trail’s murder set Cunanan off on a killing spree that ended in July when he killed himself on a houseboat in Miami Beach. Cunanan spent most of his adult life as the kept companion of wealthy older men, living a very expensive lifestyle in San Diego, California, that was far beyond his own means. In April 1997, Cunanan told his friends that he was moving to San Francisco. However, he actually bought a one-way ticket to Minnesota after begging his credit card company to extend his credit limit.

In Minnesota, Cunanan met up with David Madson, whom he had briefly dated in the past. Apparently, Cunanan went there in an attempt to continue the relationship. On April 27, Jeffrey Trail, an acquaintance of both Cunanan and Madson, met the two at Madson’s apartment, but the details of what happened there are still unknown. Authorities know only that Cunanan killed Trail with a hammer and then went to East Rush Lake, where he killed Madson two days later with one shot to the head.
Cunanan then took Madson’s jeep and drove to Chicago. However, he actually bought a one-way ticket to Minnesota after begging his credit card company to extend his credit limit. In Minnesota, Cunanan met up with David Madson, whom he had briefly dated in the past. Apparently, Cunanan went there in an attempt to continue the relationship. On April 27, Jeffrey Trail, an acquaintance of both Cunanan and Madson, met the two at Madson’s apartment, but the details of what happened there are still unknown. Authorities know only that Cunanan killed Trail with a hammer and then went to East Rush Lake, where he killed Madson two days later with one shot to the head.

Cunanan then took Madson’s jeep and drove to New Jersey in Miglin’s Lexus, Cunanan killed his fourth victim, again escaping with the victim’s car. A massive manhunt ensued when the FBI placed Cunanan on its Ten Most Wanted List. The press ran with the story, and Cunanan was featured multiple times on America’s Most Wanted.

His celebrity reached its peak on July 15, when Cunanan killed famous designer Gianni Versace outside his mansion in the South Beach section of Miami. On July 23, Fernando Carreira, the caretaker of a houseboat in Miami, found an intruder on the boat and called police. Apparently sensing his capture, Cunanan shot himself in the head, but police, unaware, engaged in a five-hour standoff with the already dead killer. No solid motive for Cunanan’s murders has emerged, although rumors abound that he was HIV positive and sought to take revenge for his condition. In the end, Cunanan lived up to his high school classmate’s billing as the student “most likely not to be forgotten.”

On this date in 1863, John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

Twenty-six-year-old Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country when he shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 14. Booth was a Maryland native and a strong supporter of the Confederacy. As the war entered its final stages, Booth hatched a conspiracy to kidnap the president. He enlisted the aid of several associates, but the opportunity never presented itself. After the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, Booth changed the plan to a simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Only Lincoln was actually killed, however. Seward was stabbed by Lewis Paine but survived, while the man assigned to kill Johnson did not carry out his assignment.

After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped to the stage below Lincoln’s box seat. He landed hard, breaking his leg, before escaping to a waiting horse behind the theater. Many in the audience recognized Booth, so the army was soon hot on his trail. Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home, and Mudd treated Booth’s leg. This earned Mudd a life sentence in prison when he was implicated as part of the conspiracy, but the sentence was later commuted. Booth found refuge for several days at the home of Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia.

After receiving aid from several Confederate sympathizers, Booth’s luck finally ran out. The countryside was swarming with military units looking for Booth, although few shared information since there was a $20,000 reward. While staying at the farm of Richard Garrett, Federal troops arrived on their search but soon rode on. The unsuspecting Garrett allowed his suspicious guests to sleep in his barn, but he instructed his son to lock the barn from the outside to prevent the strangers from stealing his horses. A tip led the Union soldiers back to the Garrett farm, where they discovered Booth and Herold in the barn. Herold came out, but Booth refused. The building was set on fire to flush Booth, but he was shot while still inside. He lived for three hours before gazing at his hands, muttering “Useless, useless,” as he died.

On this date in 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of the Atlanta, Georgia pencil factory where she worked.

Her murder later led to one of the most disgraceful episodes of bigotry, injustice, and mob violence in American history. Next to Phagan’s body were two small notes that purported to pin the crime on Newt Lee, the night watchman at the factory. Lee was arrested, but it quickly became evident that the notes were a crude attempt by the barely literate Jim Conley to cover up his own involvement. Conley was the factory’s janitor, a black man, and a well-known drunk. Conley then decided to shift the blame toward Leo Frank, the Jewish owner of the factory. Despite the absurdity of Conley’s claims, they nevertheless took hold. The case’s prosecutor was Hugh Dorsey, a notorious bigot and friend of Georgia’s populist leader, Tom Watson. Reportedly, Watson told Dorsey, “Hell, we can lynch a nigger anytime in Georgia, but when do we get the chance to hang a Yankee Jew?”

Frank was tried by Judge Leonard Roan, who allowed the blatantly unfair trial to go forward even after he was privately informed by Conley’s attorney that Conley had admitted to Frank’s innocence on more than one occasion. The trial was packed with Watson’s followers and readers of his racist newspaper, Jeffersonian. The jury was terrorized into a conviction despite the complete lack of evidence against Frank. Georgia governor John Slaton initiated his own investigation and quickly concluded that Frank was completely innocent. Three weeks before his term ended, Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence in the hope that he would eventually be freed when the publicity died down. However, Watson had other plans: He mobilized his supporters to form the Knights of Mary Phagan. Thousands of Jewish residents in Atlanta were forced to flee the city because police refused to stop the lynch mob.

The Knights of Mary Phagan then made their way to the prison farm where Frank was incarcerated. They handcuffed the warden and the guards and abducted Frank, bringing him to Marietta, Phagan’s hometown. There he was hanged to death from a giant oak tree. Thousands of spectators came to watch and have their picture taken in front of his lifeless body. The police did nothing to stop the spectacle. Although most of the country was outraged and horrified by the lynching, Watson remained very popular in Georgia. In fact, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1920. Frank did not receive a posthumous pardon until 1986, on the grounds that his lynching deprived him of his right to appeal his conviction.

On this day in 1995, the actress Ginger Rogers, best known for the 10 films she made with her dance partner Fred Astaire, dies at the age of 83. Born in Missouri, Rogers began taking dance and singing lessons as a toddler. By age five, she was appearing in commercials. At age 15, she won a Charleston dancing contest and soon after began touring the Southern and Midwestern vaudeville circuit with her act, “Ginger and the Redheads.” Her mother, Lela, a reporter and writer, worked as Ginger’s manager and traveled with her as a chaperone. She and Ginger’s father had divorced shortly after Ginger was born, and Lela would continue to manage her daughter’s career until her death in 1971.

After making a splash on Broadway in George Gershwin’s hit play Girl Crazy, Rogers signed a film contract in 1931. She would play a series of wisecracking blondes in a number of B movies, working at various studios before settling at RKO. In 1933, she was paired with Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio. Although she lacked formal ballroom training, she and Astaire made a perfect match on the dance floor. Audiences flocked to the 10 movies they made together, including The Gay Divorcee (1933), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance? (1937). Apart from her graceful dance moves, Rogers also established her credentials as a serious actress with her performance in the 1940 film Kitty Foyle, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress.

According to an obituary published in the New York Times, Rogers was the highest-paid women in America by 1941, earning $355,000 per year. In addition to a hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, she also bought a ranch on Oregon’s Rogue River, where she spent as much of her free time as possible. Married and divorced five times, Rogers had no children. She continued to perform into the mid-1960s. Rogers made her final film appearance in 1965, when she played the mother of the actress Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow. Rogers is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California, not far from her long time dance partner Fred Astaire.

Forensic evidence is first used in a criminal case in Australia on this date in 1922.

Colin Ross is hanged to death in Australia for the rape and murder of 13-year-old Alma Tirtschke. Ross was one of the first criminals in Australia to be convicted based on forensic evidence. On December 30, 1921, Tirtschke was reported missing in Melbourne. The next day, a constable patrolling Gun Alley, a well-known area for prostitutes, found the young schoolgirl’s body bundled up in a blanket. Strangely, despite evidence of a brutal rape, there was no trace of blood found on her body.

Given the scarcity of cars in Melbourne at the time, the police surmised that the perpetrator had to live nearby. Prostitutes’ eyewitness accounts led authorities to Colin Ross, who owned a nearby bar. Pretending to be helpful, Ross volunteered that Tirtschke had been at the bar on the day she was killed.
Police soon learned that Ross had previously indicated a predilection for young girls. He had reportedly told someone, “I prefer them without feathers.” Although this was enough to convince law enforcement officials of Ross’ guilt, additional evidence would be needed for a conviction. Since no evidence would be forthcoming from the obviously cleaned body, police turned their attention to Ross’ house.

There they found a blanket that had long red hairs on it. The color and length matched Tirtschke’s hair, and new experts in the field identified it as human. Some of the hairs had been pulled out at the roots, suggesting a struggle. At the trial, the defense challenged the forensics expert to distinguish and identify several hair samples. The strategy backfired when the expert did just that, and Ross was convicted. It is now believed, however, that Ross was almost certainly innocent. Recent forensic research has demonstrated that the hair samples were misidentified, either accidentally or at the behest of the police investigator in charge of the case.

On this date in 1982, actress Jane Fonda releases her first aerobic work-out video, entitled “Workout.”

On this date in 1014, Brian Boru, the high king of Ireland, is assassinated by a group of retreating Norsemen shortly after his Irish forces defeated them. Brian, a clan prince, seized the throne of the southern Irish state of Dal Cais from its Eogharacht rulers in 963. He subjugated all of Munster, extended his power over all of southern Ireland, and in 1002 became the high king of Ireland. Unlike previous high kings of Ireland, Brian resisted the rule of Ireland’s Norse invaders, and after further conquests his rule was acknowledged across most of Ireland. As his power increased, relations with the Norsemen on the Irish coast grew increasingly strained. In 1013, Sitric, king of the Dublin Norse, formed an alliance against Brian, featuring Viking warriors from Ireland, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and Iceland, as well as soldiers of Brian’s native Irish enemies.

On April 23, 1014, Good Friday, forces under Brian’s son Murchad met and annihilated the Viking coalition at the Battle of Clontarf, near Dublin. After the battle, a small group of Norsemen, flying from their defeat, stumbled on Brian’s tent, overcame his bodyguards, and murdered the elderly king. Victory at Clontarf broke Norse power in Ireland forever, but Ireland largely fell into anarchy after the death of Brian.

On this date in 1969, Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. In 1972, Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty. In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York who had just won California’s Democratic presidential primary, gave a victory speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After the speech, Kennedy was making his way toward the hotel kitchen to greet supporters when he was shot three times at close range by Sirhan Sirhan with a .22 caliber revolver; a fourth bullet went through Kennedy’s jacket. Five other people were shot as well, none fatally. Several of the senator’s friends and aides subdued Sirhan on the scene.

Kennedy died at the hospital the next day, June 6, at age 42. The funeral for Kennedy, who served as U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and had been a senator since 1965, was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. His body was then taken to Washington, D.C., by train, with thousands of people lining the route to pay their respects. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant born in Jerusalem in 1944, moved to the United States with his family as a boy and attended high school in California. He later stated he killed Robert Kennedy because the senator had supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Following a three-month trial, during which Sirhan’s lawyers argued he was mentally unstable at the time of the murder, he was convicted on April 17, 1969. On April 23, he was given the death penalty. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times, and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.

On this date in 1886, Ohio passes a statute that makes seduction unlawful. Covering all men over the age of 18 who worked as teachers or instructors of women, this law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from two to 10 years in prison.

Ohio’s seduction law was not the first of its kind. A Virginia law made it illegal for a man to have an “illicit connection with any unmarried female of previous chaste character” if the man did so by promising to marry the girl. An 1848 New York law made it illegal to “under promise of marriage seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character.” Georgia’s version of the seduction statute made it unlawful for men to “seduce a virtuous unmarried female and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces, and allow him to have carnal knowledge of her.”

These laws were only sporadically enforced, but a few men were actually prosecuted and convicted. In Michigan, a man was convicted of three counts of seduction, but the appeals court did everything in its power to overturn the decision. It threw out two charges because the defense reasoned that the woman was no longer virtuous after the couple’s first encounter. The other charge was overturned after the defense claimed that the woman’s testimony–that they had had sex in a buggy–was medically impossible.

On some occasions, women used these laws in order to coerce men into marriage. A New York man in the middle of an 1867 trial that was headed toward conviction proposed to the alleged victim. The local minister was summoned, and the trial instantly became a marriage ceremony.

On this day in 1994, former President Richard Nixon, dies after suffering a stroke. One of Orange County’s very own, eh was born in Yorba Linda, California on January 9, 1913. In a 1978 speech at Oxford University, Nixon admitted he had screwed up during his presidency but predicted that his achievements would be viewed more favorably with time. He told the young audience, “You’ll be here in the year 2000, see how I am regarded then.”

Nixon did not owe his success in politics to personality or charm: in fact, even many of his staunch supporters described him as cold, aloof, crude, arrogant and paranoid. President Eisenhower himself, whom Nixon served as vice president, claimed that Nixon would never win the presidency because the people don’t like him. After proving his former boss wrong, Nixon left the office in disgrace, resigning in the face of impending impeachment. His paranoia of political sabotage by his opponents had inspired him to authorize the wire-tapping of enemies and supporters alike. Ironically, it was the conversations he taped in his own office that led to his ultimate downfall.

Nixon is most often remembered for his involvement in the Watergate scandal as president and for his Cold War era persecution of suspected communists while serving as a U.S. senator. However, Nixon left a legacy as complex as his personality. Despite the immense disappointment and distrust in government that the Watergate scandal inspired in most Americans, Nixon was correct in assuming that some aspects of his leadership would be judged favorably with the passage of time. These include his bold efforts to improve diplomatic relations with China and Russia, as well as pushing lasting and influential legislation through Congress. Nixon’s legislative legacy includes the National Environmental Policy Act, passed in 1969, which created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. He also lowered the voting age to 18, established Amtrak, launched the space-shuttle program and authorized the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). During his retirement, several subsequent presidents consulted Nixon for his expertise in international affairs. Nixon and his wife Pat are both buried on the grounds of his birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. The site is also the home of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.

Actor Jack Nicholson is born on this date in 1937. He will become known as one of the greatest actors of his generation and famous for his roles in such movies as Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As it Gets, is born in Neptune, New Jersey.

On this date in 1992, Robert Alton Harris is executed in California’s gas chamber after 13 years on death row. This was California’s first execution since former Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other state Supreme Court justices, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, had been rejected by California voters. From 1979 to 1986, the Bird court had reversed 64 out of the 68 death penalty cases on appeal. Supporters of capital punishment initiated a campaign against Bird, Grodin, and Reynoso, successfully ousting them from the court in 1986. Republican Governor George Deukmejian then appointed three justices in favor of the death penalty to take their places.

On July 5, 1978, Harris abducted John Mayeski and Michael Baker, both 16, from a fast-food restaurant in Mira Mesa, California. After he shot both Mayeski and Baker, he then ate their hamburgers. In an amazing coincidence, the father of one of the boys pulled Harris over for a traffic violation later that same day. Attorneys for Harris sought to avoid the death penalty by arguing that the killer suffered organic brain damage as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome. The case became a focal point for death penalty abolitionists, who held rallies across the state. Amnesty International even tried to lobby on Harris’ behalf, but their efforts proved unsuccessful and Harris was executed on April 21. Since then, California has had a steady stream of executions but remains far behind Texas and Florida in the number of inmates put to death.