Background
Bennett was born in Virginia to a family of African-American sharecroppers.
Bennett was born in Virginia to a family of African-American sharecroppers.
As of 2016, he is the last person to have been executed by the United States. military. He was epileptic, but managed to enlist in the United States. Army when he was 18. Days before Christmas 1954, a heavily intoxicated Bennett left his base to find a brothel, but chanced upon an 11-year-old Austrian girl.
He raped her in a meadow and tried to drown her.
He was soon arrested, tried and convicted by a court-martial of First Degree Child Rape and Attempted First Degree Murder one month later and sentenced to death four times. Kennedy took no action on the appeals, letting his predecessor"s death warrant stand.
Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1961.