Criminal Justice Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper tells the story of Pesach Rubenstein and how he cheated the hangman in 1876. Rubenstein was charged, tried, and convicted in Kings County, New York, for the 1875 murder of his 19 year-old cousin, Sarah Alexander. The Rubenstein case is noteworthy in that it received unprecedented media attention in the 1870s, involved the use of rudimentary forensic evidence at the trial, and divided the community on issues of religion, ethnicity, immigration (the victim and defendant were recent Jewish immigrants from Poland), and imposition of the death penalty. Using a case study approach to analyze the trial transcript, newspaper articles, and historical accounts of the murder investigation, Rubenstein’s trial, and his incarceration at Brooklyn’s Raymond Street Jail, this article offers a glimpse into the operations of an urban jail in an earlier era when our criminal justice system was in its infancy.
Copyright Statement
Post-print
Repository Citation
Stinson, Philip M., "Pesach N. Rubenstein Cheats the Hangman: A Case Study of Punishment and the Death Penalty at Brooklyn’s Raymond Street Jail" (2010). Criminal Justice Faculty Publications. 1.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/crim_just_pub/1
Publication Date
2010
Publication Title
The Prison Journal
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885509357542
Start Page No.
24
End Page No.
47