[MotherBear]

[color=darkblue:d9b17e8b41]A bit of NZ history for you to read as it's been so 'deathly' quiet on here the last couple of days.[/color:d9b17e8b41]

[b:d9b17e8b41]Last man executed in NZ died a bungled death [/b:d9b17e8b41]
02 December 2005

The last man executed in New Zealand appears to have died a messy death.

Farmer Walter James Bolton, 68, was convicted of the murder of his wife Beatrice and was hanged in Auckland Prison on February 18, 1957. He was the 54th and last person to be legally put to death before the death penalty was abolished in New Zealand.

However, his death may not have been as precise and uncomplicated as the records suggested. No one is still alive who witnessed the execution but it is believed some of those in the death chamber had to swing on his legs after the hangman miscalculated and Bolton did not die instantly from a broken neck. He was believed to have writhed for some time on the end of the rope before he suffocated. Auckland crown prosecutor Simon Moore said the execution was bungled.

"The spectacle for those required to attend was so horrifying that they indicated they would boycott any further execution," Mr Moore said in a speech to the Criminal Bar Association in 2000. Official reports on the hanging requested by NZPA in 1999 made no reference to the bungle.
In an official report the day after Bolton was hanged, Auckland's Supreme Court sheriff, C Mason, said he wanted to put on record his appreciation "of the excellent arrangements made by the Superintendent (of Auckland Prison) and the efficient manner in which his staff carried out their unpleasant duties". In another report to the Secretary For Justice from the prison it was said "everything went according to plan" and the staff at the prison "carried out their duty like clockwork".

One of the most infamous people, and the only woman executed in New Zealand, was Minnie Dean, known as the Winton baby farmer. On August 12, 1895, she was hanged in Invercargill for the murder of a baby.
New Zealand first introduced the death penalty under the Criminal Code Act in 1893 but abolished it twice over the decades. In the Crimes Act of 1908 it was one of several penalties which would now be considered unusual, including imprisonment with hard labour, flogging and whipping, Mr Moore said. The law also required the body to be buried within the prison or the place where the person was executed and ruled that no more than 10 male adult spectators were to be allowed to witness executions.

The death penalty was abolished in 1941 but brought back by the National government in 1950 and over the next six years eight convicted murderers were hanged. After Bolton was hanged in 1957 the death penalty was not used again and the Crimes Act of 1961 effectively removed it as a punishment, although it stayed on the legal books as punishment for treason. Mr Moore said all vestiges of the death penalty were removed from the statute books in 1989 with the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act.

Bolton's execution created a huge controversy in 1957 with the suggestion that not only did he not murder his wife, but that she had not been murdered at all. Bolton was accused of murdering his wife with arsenic on the Wanganui farm he managed in July 1956.

Bolton and his wife were married for 43 years and had six children and a relatively close relationship, journalist Bernie Steeds wrote in an article on the couple several years ago. In the 15 months before she died her mystery illness was never diagnosed but when she finally died, a post mortem identified arsenic as the cause. Bolton was charged with her murder in a move which shocked Wanganui. The evidence was circumstantial and suggested Bolton had put the poison in cups of tea he gave his wife, although no trace of the poison was ever found.
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