# John Doe executions?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 3, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860 "2012-12-03T16:18:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/1 "2012-12-03T16:18:08Z")
I sent this question Unca Cece’s way some time ago, but as he’s busy and you’re all here doing nothing better…
Has a person of unknown identity ever been executed? By that, I mean a person given a full hearing or trial in a reasonably civilized country, where rights would be respected and there is a reasonable assumption that any person can be identified? Skip actions during wartime, or in chaotic societies (including the US South before the 1950s), etc. where a kangaroo court or military exigencies might have bypassed some of the niceties.
Has a person ever been caught, arraigned, tried, found guilty and executed without their true identity being established?
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/2 "2012-12-03T16:56:35Z")
I believe that in theory today, and in practice in the past, it was/is often possible to “legally” change your name informally in the US. Are you talking about situations where John Williamson packed up his bags in New York City and moved to Kansas to become a homesteader and introduced himself to his new neighbors as Henry McDonald, lived under that name for several years, and then was finally convicted of a capital crime in Kansas and executed, and nobody found out that Henry was originally named John because nobody checked up on those things in 1860? Or are you only talking about cases where the defendant refuses in any way to identify himself and no biographical details can be found, or where the defendant has amnesia and nobody, including himself, can figure out who he is, but at least they know he’s guilty of a capital crime?
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/3 "2012-12-03T18:02:35Z")
The latter. Somehow, someone refuses to give their name and they go through the entire process, all the way to “He’s dead, Jim!” without their real identity ever being learned.
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/4 "2012-12-03T18:17:14Z")
If there had ever been a case like this, it would be my guess that we would know about it, with lots of articles in newspapers and magazines, true crime books, TV documentaries etc.
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/5 "2012-12-03T18:24:24Z")
Not an execution per se, but killed in a shootout - no-one to this day knows the actual identity of the “Mad Trapper of Rat River”, aka “Albert Johnson”.
> **[Albert Johnson (criminal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal))**
>
> .30-30 Savage Model 99F
> Albert Johnson (c. 1890–1900 – February 17, 1932), also known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River, was a fugitive whose actions stemming from a trapping dispute eventually sparked a huge manhunt in the Northwest Territories and Yukon in Northern Canada. The event became a media circus as Johnson eluded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) team sent to take him into custody, which ended after a 150 mi (240 km) pursuit lasting more than a month and a shootout in which Joh...
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/6 "2012-12-03T19:38:39Z")
These days, the time between arrest and execution is usually well over a decade. That’s a long time for John Doe to sit around without ever telling anyone who he really is. I agree with **Donnerwetter** that you’d think this would be a rather famous event if it ever occurred.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/7 "2012-12-03T20:26:57Z")
The Albert Johnson case is pretty close to what I was imagining. It seems to me that such a case would be well known, but stranger things have slipped through the public mind. Something along these lines keeps tickling a back neuron - maybe a French or Quebecois case? Or maybe I’m blurring the Canuckian origins of the Johnson case there.
Any further cites, notions or comments welcome.
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### Author:  [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/8 "2012-12-03T20:41:13Z")
Not in the United states, although the details surrounding some executions prior to 1885 have been lost to history, sometimes including the prisoner’s name.
The Espy File is an exhaustively researched database of the 15,000+ executions documented in this country between 1608 and 2002 (the latter being the date the list was published).
[You can download a copy for yourself](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-us-1608-2002-espy-file) in Excel format.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-doe-executions/642860/9 "2012-12-03T21:01:56Z")
> [@Diceman](#):
>
> These days, the time between arrest and execution is usually well over a decade. That’s a long time for John Doe to sit around without ever telling anyone who he really is. I agree with **Donnerwetter** that you’d think this would be a rather famous event if it ever occurred.
Yes. Such an incident would be up there in the list of the country’s most famous mysteries. Was the “John Smith” executed in 1905 for murdering several people in plain view of a crowd of witnesses in Pittsburgh actually a former decorated Civil War hero who had succumbed to drug abuse and dementia of aging? Was he the outcast illegitimate son of a shipping magnate? Was he a disgraced former mayor of Camden, NJ? Was he an “old money” scion who had gambled away the family fortune at a racetrack and turned desperate?