Flouting Appeals, a Death Row Killer Wants Execution by Hanging

If three-time murderer Westley Allan Dodd gets his wish, he will become the first person executed by hanging in the United States since 1965.

Dodd has fought efforts to appeal or delay his Jan. 5 execution. He says he wants to die by hanging because he strangled the youngest of his victims, a 4-year-old, and hanged him in a closet. If granted clemency, the 31-year-old Dodd told the court: “I will kill and rape (children) again and enjoy every minute of it.”

Although the state Supreme Court approved Dodd’s request to waive further appeals, the American Civil Liberties Union has said it will appeal on Dodd’s behalf.

The last prison hangings in the United States were carried out in 1965 in Kansas, when four murderers were executed. Two of the condemned, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, became the subjects of Truman Capote’s book “In Cold Blood.”

Today, death by hanging remains legal in four states: Washington, Montana, New Hampshire and Delaware.

It’s Washington’s official method of execution, although condemned prisoners can opt for death by lethal injection. The last hanging in Washington occurred in 1963.

Dodd was sentenced to death in 1990 after admitting he strangled 4-year-old Lee Iseli in October, 1989, and fatally stabbed 10-year-old William Neer and his 11-year-old brother, Cole, a month earlier.

Dodd said he started molesting youngsters when he was 14. He was sentenced to sex-offender treatment but said he agreed to it only to avoid jail and continue molesting children.

At Dodd’s insistence, trial lawyers said, witnesses weren’t called who could have testified that he was well regarded by teachers and relatives, or that his criminal behavior could be related to a troubled childhood.

Dodd’s attorney, Darrell Lee, said Dodd wants to be executed because his crimes were so terrible that it makes him sick to think about them and because he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in a cell.

Death penalty opponents have asked Gov. Booth Gardner to commute the sentence to life in prison. Gardner has said he won’t intervene.