Tony Chebatoris

Anthony Chebatoris (1898 – 1938), was the only person executed for a capital crime in Michigan since it became a state in 1837. He was tried and executed by the federal authorities. Michigan abolished the death penalty over 90 years before his execution.

Chebatoris's first conviction for a crime was in 1918 for armed robbery in Detroit, and in 1927 he was arrested for violating the Dyer Act in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1928, he went to prison at Marquette for armed robbery.

Murder

In 1937, Chebatoris and fellow prison inmate, Jack Gracy, made plans to rob the Chemical State Savings Bank located in downtown Midland, Michigan. On September 29, Gracey entered the bank first with a sawed-off shotgun hiding under his long coat. Chebatoris followed Gracey into the bank. Gracey approached bank president Clarence Macomber and shoved the shot gun into his ribs. Macomber and Gracey grappled with the weapon. Macomber forced the gun down while trying to push Gracey towards the front of the bank. Chebatoris, who was standing back from the fight, aimed his revolver at Macomber, wounding him in the shoulder. Paul Bywater, the head teller, came to the front counter to see what the commotion was about. Chebatoris took aim and fired at Bywater, shooting him in the stomach. Chebatoris and Gracy fled the bank in their black two-door Ford. Meanwhile, when Dr. Frank Hardy, a dentist on the second floor of the bank building heard the gunshots, he grabbed a deer rifle he kept by the window in case of a bank holdup and fired at the getaway car as it sped towards the Benson Street Bridge. One of Hardy's shots hit the driver and the car careened into another parked car along the road. Chebatoris and Gracey got out of the car and started looking for the shots firing at them. Mistaking Henry Porter, a truck driver from Bay City, as a police officer, Chebatoris fired his gun and seriously wounded him. When Gracy tried to commandeer a truck, Hardy shot him in the head, killing him instantly. Then Chebatoris ran along some railroad tracks and tried to get away by stealing a car, but was stopped by Sheriff Ira Smith.

Trial and execution

Chebatoris was charged with attempted bank robbery, and then murder when Henry Porter died 12 days later from his gunshot wound. His trial was held at Federal Court in Bay City, Judge Arthur C. Tuttle presiding. Chebatoris was found guilty of murder on October 29, 1937, and sentenced to death under the National Bank Robbery Act of 1934.

Since capital punishment in Michigan was abolished in 1846, Governor Frank Murphy tried to get Chebatoris's sentence communted to life imprisonment or move the execution to another state, arguing Michigan had no capital punishment. However, a loop hole in the law stated that the crime of treason was punishable by execution. After Murphy appealed all the way to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Judge Tuttle refused to change the location of the execution, Anthony Chebatoris was hanged at Milan Federal Prison at dawn on July 8, 1938. In 1963, the Michigan voters approved a new state constitution (effective 01-01-1964) that abolished capital punishment for treason and all other crimes (Art. 4, Sec. 46).

References

Files of the Midland Daily News, 1937 and 1938;"Butcher's Dozen," by Lawrence Wakefield