Tags: Criminal.
Rainey Bethea (c. 1909 – August 14 1936) was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States. Bethea who was a black man confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old white woman named Lischia Edwards and after being convicted of her rape he was publicly hanged in Owensboro Kentucky. Mistakes in performing the hanging and the surrounding media circus contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.