Rush Griffin (Mississippi[1] [2] April 5, 1935) was an American convicted killer who was executed at San Quentin prison by the state of California despite the fact that a stay of execution had been issued by a court.[3]
Griffin and Willie Smith had both confessed to the killing of USC Medical School student Laurence Lyon during an attempted robbery November 12, 1934, at "9th and Hemlock"[4] or Ninth and Central.[5] Griffin was sentenced to death and hanged on the San Quentin gallows on April 5, 1935.[6] The execution came to the known as the "error hanging".[7] The clerk responsible for failing to correctly process the appeal documents and court communications for the prison warden was suspended for 30 days without pay.[8]
According to an article by Judge Arthur Alarcón, as a result of Griffin's execution without full due process, a California legislative "committee recommended that legislation be enacted providing for an automatic appeal in all cases where the trial court ordered a sentence of death. As a result, section 1239 was amended to provide that '[w]hen...a judgment of death is rendered, an appeal is automatically taken by the defendant.' The right to an automatic appeal 'imposes a duty upon [the] court 'to make an examination of the complete record of the proceedings had in the trial court, to the end that it be ascertained whether defendant was given a fair trial.' The court 'cannot avoid or abdicate this duty merely because defendant desires to waive the right provided for him'."[9]