This week in 1938

“When I was a kid raising hell everyone told me I’d end up on the gallows, so I thought I’d fool them. Also, there’s an old saying I like: “Live by the sword and die by the sword.’”

— John Deering, convicted of murder and robbery, firing squad, Utah.
Executed October 31, 1938

Deering had spent seventeen years in jail after a robbery and shooting. Suspected of a second robbery, he was captured in Michigan and confessed to the murder of Oscar Meredith Jr. in a Salt Lake City robbery to avoid a fifteen-year Michigan jail sentence. Deering agreed to be hooked up to a machine that measured his heart rate during execution proceedings. When he was asked for a final statement, his heartbeat “fluttered wildly, then calmed after he spoke,” according to a Chicago Daily Tribune article.