Ronald Wolfe

Ronald Lee Wolfe (September 3, 1930 – May 8, 1964) was an American habitual criminal and sex offender who became the last person executed in the United States for non-homicidal rape, and the last person to be executed for a crime where nobody died. James Cobern, who was electrocuted in Alabama the same year for robbery, had sexually mutilated and murdered his ex-girlfriend whom he robbed, but was only tried for robbery. Wolfe was also the second-to-last person executed in Missouri before the U.S. moratorium on capital punishment.

Early life Wolfe was born in Clarendon, New York. His mother disappeared when he was two weeks old and his father disappeared when he was 6 years old. He lived with his grandparents in his earlier years.

Wolfe had 11 prior felony convictions. His first conviction came when he was arrested for auto theft in New York at age 14 in August 1945. In 1946, he was sentenced to the New York State Vocational Institution as a juvenile delinquent. In 1951, he received a prison term at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina for breaking and entering. In 1956, he was sentenced to a term at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia for interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle. This was his last conviction prior to his death sentence. "The evidence was such as to have warranted the jury in finding the salient facts to be that about 7:30 p. m., on the evening in question, defendant, by using a candy bar, lured the child into the car he was driving, and away from the Sacred Heart Church's Fall Festival in Troy which she was attending with her parents and three sisters and a brother; he drove her some three miles into the country where he parked the car, and admittedly made repeated *12 unsuccessful attempts to ravish the child, and otherwise had shocking relations (short of penetration) with her; the car was thereafter parked within about a hundred feet of a farm house, one of the occupants of which, at about 8:30 p. m., heard the car's motor idling, and looked out the window where in the darkness she discerned an object moving away from the automobile and toward the house; upon investigation this was found to be the prosecutrix, who was taken into the home, and forthwith returned to her family at the church picnic in Troy. She was taken to a hospital at once and examined, and her condition as described by the examining physician was such as to dispel any doubt of the fact that there had been penetration and extensive damage to the affected part by tearing." Wolfe was quickly arrested. The car he was using was determined to have been stolen. On October 26, 1959. Wolfe and a fellow inmate, William Buffington, who was awaiting trial for forging checks, escaped from prison. They stole a car, then a truck, and fled south. Wolfe was eventually recaptured in North Carolina. In 1960, he pleaded guilty to rape and was sentenced to death. After losing several rounds of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case. In rejecting his appeal, the Supreme Court of Missouri quoted excerpts from his trial, including the reasoning of the judge when he sentenced him to death in spite of his guilty plea.

Aftermath Wolfe's case drew nationwide attention once again in 2008 when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Louisiana to ban capital punishment for child rape. The court directly cited Wolfe in court opinions.

Only one other convicted rapist would face execution for rape after Wolfe. In 1965, Clayton Dawson came within one day of execution in Tennessee. The executions of Dawson and two convicted murderers were scheduled to take place at dawn on March 21, 1965. The day before their scheduled executions, however, Governor Frank G. Clement commuted the death sentences of all five men on death row in Tennessee to 99 years imprisonment after a bill to abolish capital punishment in the state failed by a single vote in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Dawson, a black man, was a serial rapist who had been dubbed by the press as the "Foul Smelling Rapist". He was accused of robbing and raping three white women, as well as a black woman and her 16-year-old daughter, in Memphis. Dawson was sentenced to death for the rapes of his two black victims, albeit his white victims testified against him at his trial. In 1976, Dawson was released on parole after having his sentence commuted to time served by Governor Ray Blanton.

In January 1977, Dawson was arrested for raping a 19-year-old Belmont College student. On July 21, 1977, Dawson pleaded guilty to rape and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.