John A. Bennett
American convicted of rape and attempted murder (1936–1961)
🗓️ 13 April 1961
John Arthur Bennett was a U.S. Army soldier who remains the last person to be executed after a court-martial by the United States Armed Forces. The 18-year-old private was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl in Austria. Despite last minute appeals for clemency and pleas to President John F. Kennedy by the victim and her family to spare his life, Kennedy refused. Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1961.
