State Executioner is an episode of the radio show Lights Out. It first aired March 17, 1937.
Description[]
In Georgian England, a man is an executioner for the Crown, for which he feels no remorse.
Story[]
Sam Jones, the State Executioner in a nondescript town in 18th Century England, sits in his home with a pistol to his head, wanting to be dead. He’s waiting for a lynch mob he believes is after him to barge in his door to give him the courage to pull the trigger. This leads to thinking about the circumstances that led him to his present situation. With that, he recollects his career as a hangman and its start 20 years ago.
The story flashes back twenty years to him appealing to the prison warden to be hired on as the prison’s hangman. He demonstrates his knowledge of the practice by telling the warden how to prepare the rope and hanging methods. This impresses the warden enough to give him a chance to prove himself by handling a hanging. Jones is successful and is given the job. At some point, it becomes known by others that he has become a hangman and a neighbor confronts his wife, Ellen, about it. Jones catches the two in conversation entering his home and kicks the gossiper out. When Ellen confronts Jones about it, not only does he confess to being a hangman, but says he loves his work and he loves killing the condemned. When he says this his life’s ambition and he’ll never stop, Ellen leaves him. However, Sam doesn’t care because he loves his work and throws himself more into it. Over the course of 20 years, he executes 777 men and women and is paid five gold guineas for every one. As he accumulates wealth, he starts to like getting paid just as much as the hangings. This is when he talks about his latest hanging.
The condemned was a 20 year old law student named Thomas Allen. He had been accused of killing his fiancé because they were heard arguing some time before. However, Thomas said that she sent him a letter before she died that she was taking her own life by poisoning and wrote the letter to safeguard him. However, Thomas misplaces the letter and is unable to produce the letter when placed under arrest. Due to this lack of evidence, Allen is quickly convicted and condemned to death by hanging.
Placed in a holding cell, Jones skulks around it, eager at the prospect of hanging the young man. The warden then gives Jones an armful of Allen’s books to give to him. As Jones is walking to the cell, a white piece of paper falls from one of the books. Jones looks at it and discovers it’s the exonerating letter from Allen’s fiancé. However, rather than turn the letter over to the proper authorities, Jones pockets the letter, determined not to be cheated out of a “good strong neck”.
The day of the execution, Jones is preparing for the hanging as he hears Allen pleading with the minister to speak with the king and to find the letter with latter still in Jones’ pocket. The warden asks Jones to take special care on this execution and also said there was a woman to see him, but Jones was too engrossed in his work to see anyone and continued preparations. The hour of the execution comes and Jones waits with the rope in his hand while Allen is being led to the gallows sobbing. Allen makes one last plea to find the letter before Jones quickly puts the hood over his head and springs the trap, killing him.
Jones, feeling good about killing Allen and getting paid is walking home when he is confronted by a woman. After a moment, he realizes it’s his ex-wife Ellen. She yells at him that she tried to see him but was refused and told him he hung Tom Allen and her maiden name is Allen. An uncaring Jones fails to see the significance of and Ellen tells Sam that Tom was his son as Ellen was apparently with child when she left Sam.
This triggers shock and disbelief from Jones who begins to be confronted by the relatives of all the people he executed in his twenty year career and becomes an angry mob sending Jones running for his life. In reality, no one was chasing him and the mob was a figment of his imagination conjured from a guilty conscience, which leads back to the present situation of him with a pistol to his head and hears a knock at the door. He screams to the mob that he assumes is outside that not only did he kill their loved ones, but he killed his own son. Finally having the courage to end it all, Jones invites the mob to come in and watch him die and then pulls the trigger.
Later, it is revealed that there was only one man outside and he was knocking at the wrong house hoping to meet an acquaintance.