| EPILOGUE “THE MOST HORRIBLE MOMENT”

Twenty years after Anna Marie’s execution, Cincinnati’s common pleas judge Charles S. Bell still had vivid memories of her trial and the mandatory death sentence he invoked. Here are his recollections, as told to Howard M. Greenwald of the Cincinnati Enquirer, in 1959. Judge Bell died May 6, 1965, at the age of eighty-four.

Many thousands of words have been written about the Anna Marie Hahn case of 1937, both before and after the verdict which made her the first woman in Ohio to die in the electric chair.

My role as presiding judge was not a pleasant one. Sentencing her to death, in fact, was the most horrible moment of my long judicial career. Even now, whenever I sentence anybody for anything, I think of that case. It remains far too vivid in my memory.

Mrs. Hahn, a woman in her thirties and mother of an eleven-year-old boy, was being tried for killing an elderly man by arsenic poisoning, presumably for his money. It was an exhausting experience. A jury of eleven women and one man listened attentively and patiently for about a month, sifting the evidence presented by the defense and ninety-six state witnesses in almost half-a-million words of testimony.

When the case finally went to the jury, few people in the courtroom had any doubt of Mrs. Hahn’s tragic guilt. Evidence admissible under the statutes indicated that she had killed three more men and crippled another, all with arsenic.

Yet in spite of her obvious guilt, no one expected she would get the chair. Never before in the history of Hamilton County had a woman been convicted of first degree murder without a recommendation for mercy. It was everyone’s belief that the jury—especially with eleven women on it—would never demand the death penalty.

I, too, doubted that Mrs. Hahn would be sent to the chair. So many little things can cause a jury to recommend mercy—a man’s tie, a woman’s hairdo, a manner of speech. It is no easy or everyday occurrence for twelve people to agree on a death penalty.

The jury filed back into the courtroom after three hours of deliberation. I believe I knew their decision even while it was being read to me. Tears streaked the cheeks of some of the women of the jury as the clerk read the verdict—first degree murder with no recommendation for mercy. More of the jury began to cry. Their action—in every respect a just verdict—was nevertheless a great shock to the court, the spectators, and to attorneys on both sides.

I set sentencing for three weeks later—weeks perhaps more terrible for me than for Mrs. Hahn, because throughout the entire trial and up until the very end she never believed she would pay the full penalty.

Always before when I had done my best in a trial, I had not been bothered by subsequent thoughts of it. But this one caused me great concern and no little loss of sleep. I had absolutely no choice—I had to sentence her to the chair.

It was the hardest job I ever had to do. Even on the day of the sentencing, Mrs. Hahn stood before me and maintained her innocence. I said what I had to say and not a word more. My throat was choking. When I pronounced sentence and asked that “God have mercy on your soul,” I climbed off the bench and locked myself in my chambers. Then I cried like a two-year-old child.

There were many appeals to the case—to the Ohio Supreme Court, twice to the United States Supreme Court, and to Gov. Davey for clemency. But the trial was too sound, the evidence too conclusive, the verdict too right. Two days before the execution, Mrs. Hahn made a full and complete confession of her guilt.

On December 7, 1938, Anna Marie Hahn was electrocuted. It was the end of a chapter I wish to forget, but shall always remember.