JUDICIARY: Hangar Hanging

The crimes defined . . . shall be punished as herein prescribed: First, when committed upon the high seas. . . .—U. S. Criminal Code, Sect. 272.

Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious and premeditated killing . . . is murder in the first degree. —U. S. Criminal Code, Sect. 273.

Every person guilty of murder in the first degree shall suffer death.—U. S. Criminal Code, Sect. 275.

Rarely used are these ancient and musty Federal statutes because most murders occur within the jurisdiction of a State, most murderers are executed by the people of a State. But last week under them 120,000,000 people—everybody in the U. S.—joined together in their might and majesty and put to death a Federal murderer near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was grim business. On Aug. 7, 1927, James Horace Alderman, fond of being called “King of the Rum Runners,” was navigating his liquor-laden craft some 35 miles off the Florida east coast when overhauled by Coast Guard Cutter No. 249. “King” Alderman, a begrizzled, bespectacled salt of 48, was removed to the cutter. Suddenly he whipped out a hidden revolver, became captor instead of captive, lined the crew along the rail. He debated three plans: 1) to make the guardsmen walk the plank; 2) to fire his own boat and set them adrift in it; 3) to scuttle the cutter with all hands aboard. With himself he debated too long, for the guardsmen rushed him while he pondered. His gun cracked spitefully. Three men dropped to the deck dead—Guardsmen Sidney Sanderlin and Victor A. Lamby, U. S. Secret Service Agent Robert K. Webster.

Returned to Florida in chains, piratical Alderman was tried under Sections 272, 273, 275 of the U. S. Criminal Code. In the name of the people of the U. S. in January 1928 he was convicted of murder on the high seas, sentenced by U. S. District Judge Henry D. Clayton to “be hanged by the neck until dead—dead—dead.” Vainly did Alderman carry his case to the Supreme Court of the U. S., to President Hoover for clemency.

Utterly unprepared was the U. S. to impose the death penalty. Its agents first attempted to borrow the jail of Broward County for the execution, were chased away by the County Commissioners, who insisted a U. S. hanging should occur on U. S. property. So a great gallows was erected within the gaunt metal hangar of the U. S. Coast Guard station near Fort Lauderdale. Thither was escorted Alderman, full of repentance and new-found “religion.” Greatest secrecy surrounded the execution. Newsmen were barred under threats of contempt of court. Guardsmen, pale in the pale dawn light, ringed the hangar as Alderman mounted the scaffold. A singing sea breeze through the shed swayed his body at the end of a rope as justice was done for all good U. S. people.