is on the ground. public spectacles for the white community to celebrate white supremacy, hanging was a popular method of lynching. while relatively uncommon, hanging in chains has also been practiced (mainly during the colonial era), the first being a slave after the new york slave revolt of 1712. the last hanging in chains was in 1913, of john marshall in west virginia for murder. the last public hanging in the united states (not including lynching, one of the last of which was michael donald in 1981) took place on 14 august 1936, in owensboro, kentucky. rainey bethea was executed for the rape and murder of 70-year-old lischa edwards. the execution was presided over by the first female sheriff in kentucky, florence shoemaker thompson. in california, clinton duffy, who served as warden of san quentin state prison between 1940 and 1952, presided over ninety executions. he began to oppose the death penalty, and after his retirement, wrote a memoir entitled eighty-eight men and two women in support of the movement to abolish the death penalty. the book documents several hangings gone wrong and describes how they led his predecessor, warden james b. holohan, to persuade the california legislature to replace hanging with the gas chamber in 1937. various methods of capital punishment have been replaced by lethal injection in most states and the federal government. many states that offered hanging as an option have since eliminated the method. condemned murderer victor feguer became the last inmate to be executed by hanging in the state of iowa on 15 march 1963. hanging was the preferred method of execution for capital murder cases in iowa until 1965, when the death penalty was abolished and replaced with life imprisonment without parole. barton kay kirkham was the last person to be hanged in utah, preferring it over execution by firing squad. no subsequent inmate in utah had been hanged by the time the option was replaced with lethal injection in 1980. laws in delaware were changed in 1986 to specify lethal injection, except for those convicted before 1986 (who were still allowed to choose hanging). if a choice was not made, or the convict refused to choose injection, then hanging would become the default method. this was the case in the 1996 execution of billy bailey, the most recent hanging in american history; since then, no delaware prisoner fit the category, and the state's gallows were later dismantled. upright jerker the "upright jerker" is a method of hanging, that originated from the united states in the late 19th century, where the person to be hanged is jerked into the air by weights and pulleys. it proved to be ineffective at breaking the neck of the condemned and use of the method ceased in late 1930s. inverted hanging, the "jewish" punishment woodcut by johann stumpf, who witnessed this type of execution in 1553 a completely different principle of hanging is to hang the convicted person from their legs, rather than from their neck, either as a form of torture, or as an execution method. in late medieval germany, this came to be primarily associated with jewish thieves, called the judenstrafe. the jurist ulrich tengler, in his highly influential layenspiegel from 1509, describes the procedure as follows, in the section "von juden straff": to drag the jew to the ordinary execution place between two angry or biting dogs. after dragging, to hang him from his feet by rope or chain at a designated gallows between the dogs, so that he is directed from life to death guido kisch showed that originally, this type of inverted hanging between two dogs was not a punishment specifically for jews. esther cohen writes: the inverted hanging with the accompaniment of two dogs, originally reserved for traitors, was identified from the fourteenth century as the "jewish execution", being practised in the later middle ages in both northern and mediterranean europe. the jewish execution in germany has been thoroughly studied by g. kisch, who has argued convincingly that neither the inverted hanging nor the stringing up of dogs or wolves beside the victim were particularly jewish punishments during the high middle ages. they first appeared as jewish punishments in germany only towards the end of the thirteenth century, never being recognized as exclusively jewish penalties. in france the inverted, animal-associated hanging came to be connected with jews by the later middle ages. the inverted hanging of jews is specifically mentioned in the old customs of burgundy in the context of animal hanging. the custom, dogs and all, was still in force in paris shortly before the final expulsion of the jews in 1394. in spain 1449, during a mob attack against the marranos (jews nominally converted to christianity), the jews resisted, but lost and several of them were hanged up by the feet. the first attested german case for a jew being hanged by the feet is from 1296, in present-day soultzmatt. some other historical examples of this type of hanging within the german context are one jew in hennegau 1326, two jews hanged in frankfurt 1444, one in halle in 1462, one in dortmund 1486, one in hanau 1499, one in breslau 1505, one in württemberg 1553, one in bergen 1588, one in öttingen 1611, one in frankfurt 1615 and again in 1661, and one condemned to this punishment in prussia in 1637. the details of the cases vary widely: in the 1444 frankfurt cases and the 1499 hanau case, the dogs were dead prior to being hanged, and in the late 1615 and 1661 cases in frankfurt, the jews (and dogs) were merely kept in this torture for half an hour, before being garroted from below. in the 1588 bergen case, all three victims were left hanging till they were dead, ranging from 6 to 8 days after being hanged. in the dortmund 1486 case, the dogs bit the jew to death while hanging. in the 1611 öttingen case, the jew "jacob the tall" thought to blow up the deutsche ordenhaus with gunpowder after having burgled it. he was strung up between two dogs, and a large fire was made close to him, and he expired after half an hour under this torture. in the 1553 württemberg case, the jew chose to convert to christianity after hanging like this for 24 hours; he was then given the mercy to be hanged in the ordinary manner, from the neck, and without the dogs beside him. in the 1462 halle case, the jew abraham also converted after 24 hours hanging upside down, and a priest went up on a ladder and baptised him. for two more days, abraham was left hanging, while the priest argued with the city council that a true christian should not be punished in this way. on the third day, abraham was granted a reprieve, and was taken down, but died 20 days later in the local hospital having meanwhile suffered in extreme pain. in the 1637 case, where the jew had murdered a christian jeweller, the appeal to the empress was successful, and out of mercy, the jew was condemned to be merely pinched with glowing pincers, have hot lead dripped into his wounds, and then be broken alive on the wheel. some of the reported cases may be myths, or wandering stories. the 1326 hennegau case, for example, deviates from the others in that the jew was not a thief, but was suspected (even though he was a convert to christianity) of having struck an al fresco painting of virgin mary, so that blood had begun to seep down the wall from the painting. even under all degrees of judicial torture, the jew denied performing this sacrilegious act, and was therefore exonerated. then a brawny smith demanded from him a trial by combat, because, supposedly, in a dream the virgin herself had besought the smith to do so. the court accepted the smith's challenge, he easily won the combat against the jew, who was duly hanged up by the feet between two dogs. to add to the injury, one let him be slowly roasted as well as hanged. this is a very similar story to one told in france, in which a young jew threw a lance at the head of a statue of the virgin, so that blood spurted out of it. there was inadequate evidence for a normal trial, but a frail old man asked for trial by combat, and bested the young jew. the jew confessed his crime, and was hanged by his feet between two mastiffs. the features of the earliest attested case, that of a jewish thief hanged by the feet in soultzmatt in 1296 are also rather divergent from the rest. the jew managed somehow, after he had been left to die, to twitch his body in such a manner that he could hoist himself up on the gallows and free himself. at that time, his feet were so damaged that he was unable to escape, and when he was discovered 8 days after he had been hanged, he was strangled to death by the townspeople. as late as in 1699 celle, the courts were sufficiently horrified at how the jewish leader of a robber gang (condemned to be hanged in the normal manner) declared blasphemies against christianity, that they made a ruling on the post mortem treatment of jonas meyer. after 3 days, his corpse was cut down, his tongue cut out, and his body was hanged up again, but this time from its feet. punishment for traitors guido kisch writes that the first instance he knows where a person in germany was hanged up by his feet between two dogs until he died occurred about 1048, some 250 years earlier than the first attested jewish case. this was a knight called arnold, who had murdered his lord; the story is contained in adam of bremen's history of the archbishops of hamburg-bremen. another example of a non-jew who suffered this punishment as a torture, in 1196 richard, count of acerra, was one of those executed by henry vi in the suppression of the rebelling sicilians: he held a general court in capua, at which he ordered that the count first be drawn behind a horse through the squares of capua, and then hanged alive head downwards. the latter was still alive after two days when a certain german jester called leather-bag , hoping to please the emperor, tied a large stone to his neck and shamefully put him to death a couple of centuries earlier, in france 991, a viscount walter nominally owing his allegiance to the french king hugh capet chose, on instigation of his wife, to join the rebellion under odo i, count of blois. when odo found out he had to abandon melun after all, walter was duly hanged before the gates, whereas his wife, the fomentor of treason, was hanged by her feet, causing much merriment and jeers from hugh's soldiers as her clothes fell downwards revealing her naked body, although it is not wholly clear if she died in that manner. elizabethan maritime law during queen elizabeth i's reign, the following was written concerning those who stole a ship from the royal navy: if anye one practysed to steale awaye anye of her majesty's shippes, the captaine was to cause him to be hanged by the heels untill his braines were beaten out against the shippe's sides, and then to be cutt down and lett fall intoe the sea. hanging by the ribs a man hung alive by the ribs to a gallows by william blake. originally published in stedman's narrative. in 1713, juraj jánošík, a semi-legendary slovak outlaw and folk hero, was sentenced to be hanged from his left rib. he was left to slowly die. the german physician gottlob schober (1670–1739), who worked in russia from 1712, notes that a person could hang from the ribs for about three days prior to expiring, his primary pain being that of extreme thirst. he thought this degree of insensitivity was something peculiar to the russian mentality. the dutch in suriname were also in the habit of hanging a slave from the ribs, a custom amongst the african tribes from whom they were originally purchased. john gabriel stedman stayed in south america from