John A. Bennett

John Arthur Bennett (April 10, 1936 – April 13, 1961) was a U.S. Army soldier who remains the last person to be executed after a court-martial by the United States Armed Forces. Despite last minute appeals for clemency and pleas to President John F. Kennedy by the victim and her family to spare his life, Kennedy refused. Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1961.

Bennett is the only American soldier to ever be executed for rape in peacetime.

Early life Bennett was the fourth of eight children born to a family of sharecroppers in Chatham, Virginia. His schooling finished in the fourth grade. Despite being epileptic, he managed to enlist in the U.S. Army when he was 18.

Crime and court-martial In 1954, just days before Christmas, a heavily intoxicated Bennett left Camp Roeder to find a brothel. Although Bennett had repeatedly raped Gertrude before strangling her and dumping her body in a stream, the child survived. An American officer and his wife testified that she came to their home pleading for help. Gertrude was in a disheveled state, wet and dirty, with blood on her legs. When asked what happened, she responded, "a Negro had choked me." Later, while Gertrude was being cleaned up, she stated that the man had taken off her underwear and stuck something in her. Bennett was arrested by MPs at the base movie theater a few hours later.

Bennett was tried at a general court-martial at the Lehener Kaserne, the former military barracks of the 59th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial-Royal Landwehr in Salzburg, on February 8, 1955. The military court heard medical testimony from a doctor who examined Gertrude at the officer's home, as well as another who saw her later that day at the nearby hospital. Both agreed that she had been raped.

A month later the court-martial found Bennett guilty of rape and attempted premeditated murder. He was sentenced to death by hanging. The death sentence was upheld by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 2, 1957.

Execution After his sentence was stayed two times by lower courts, the U.S. District Court in Kansas overturned the rulings on appeal in 1960. On February 27, 1961, the newly appointed Secretary of the Army Elvis Jacob Stahr Jr. ordered that the sentence be carried out. Days before Bennett's scheduled execution, Gertrude and her parents wrote to President John F. Kennedy, asking for clemency for Bennett. Her father expressed pity for his parents, while her mother said that while her daughter had been "ruined physically and mentally for her entire life," she would not object to a commutation since Bennett's execution would not change anything. Gertrude, now 17, herself said that she consented to clemency since Bennett's execution would not reverse her trauma. She did, however, ask that Bennett never be allowed to return to Europe if he was ever released from prison. As he walked to the gallows, he said "pray for me". Bennett remains the last person to be executed following a United States Armed Forces court-martial.