It is the end of the year and I am trying to hit my Goodreads goal and that means reading shirt stories and getting around to the amazon original stories that I have had my eye on forever. I got 3 months of free kindle unlimited a couple months ago and I have not utilized it because out of site, out of mind. I decided to dive into this series during spooky season, but never got around to it and now I am.
I went in knowing nothing about this installment or the whole series, and I was surprised that while I was reading, it was sounding like nonfiction and it had pictures. I googled and the Bloodlands series is in fact nonfiction which I had a hard time believing because one of my favorite things about good nonfiction is when he feels like a story and it is not boring at all. It keeps you engaged and makes you want to know the facts.
This installment is about a man named Albert Hicks who was charged with piracy after he committed murder on a Oyster slooper in New York. He could not be charged with murder outright because they never recovered the bodies of the captain and two crew members. The only punishment for murder back in this time was death by hanging. With the missing bodies, Hicks thinks he will be a free man, but then the U.S. government decided to charge him with piracy because he took around 300 dollars with his roughtly estimated to be a little over 1000 dollars today.
Piracy is punishable by death and Hicks lawyer tries to claim that it was not committed in open water, but if any type of robbery is committed on any type of body of water in the US, it is considered piracy.
Hicks was found guilty and was hanged or more like strangled to death where the statue of liberty is currently standing. It was a big spectacle with people coming and watching and even P.T. Barnum bought the clothes that Hicks wore during his trial to display in his museum.
While reading this, the crowds and the entertainment outlook that was put on this trial reminded me of the Luigi Mangione perp walk earlier this year, and how it was just one big show and attention seeking for the politians and goverment.
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