Nathaniel Lipscomb was convicted in Baltimore of the first-degree murder of three women: Lottie Kight, Pearl Weiss and Mae Hall. The court also found him guilty of rape in each of the three cases. He was arrested on April 18, 1959, tried without a jury in three separate proceedings, sentenced to death on February 26, 1960, and executed on June 9, 1961. His was the last execution at the Maryland Penitentiary.
His age, his family and his life before 1959 are not on record, and neither are the exact dates on which the three women died.
The indictments name Lottie Kight, Pearl Weiss and Mae Hall. Each woman was the subject of her own pair of indictments, one for rape and one for murder. Who they were, including their families, their ages and the lives they led, is not on record.
Lipscomb was arrested in Baltimore on April 18, 1959. He was indicted by the Criminal Court of Baltimore on six charges, two for each woman: rape and murder in the case of Lottie Kight, rape and murder in the case of Pearl Weiss, and rape and murder in the case of Mae Hall. The indictments were numbered 1598 to 1603. He gave statements to the police.
He was arraigned on May 12, 1959, and pleaded not guilty to each charge. On the following day he added two further pleas in each case: not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the offense, and a plea that he was insane at the time of the proceedings.
The court sent him to the Patuxent Institution for electroencephalographic studies. On December 14, 1959, it ordered a further examination by the psychiatric staff of the Maximum Security Hospital at Jessup. The State's psychiatrist, Dr. Morganstern, was the only psychiatrist to testify. He found Lipscomb sane at the time of his examination in December 1959, and said he could not determine whether Lipscomb had been sane when the offenses were committed, which the court put at roughly eight months to a year before the examination. No psychiatrist testified for the defense. A report by Dr. Guttmacher, noted at sentencing, found Lipscomb "responsible for his crimes."
The three cases were tried separately, each before the Criminal Court of Baltimore sitting without a jury. Judges Cullen and Carter heard them. Lipscomb stood on his pleas of not guilty and of not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the offense, and gave up the plea that he was insane at the time of the trial.
In each of the three cases he was found guilty, as charged, of rape and of murder in the first degree. On February 26, 1960, he was sentenced to death for the first-degree murder of Lottie Kight. The sentences on the other five convictions were suspended pending the execution of that sentence.
Lipscomb appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals, represented by the lawyer Robert B. Watts. The State was represented by an assistant attorney general. Chief Judge Brune wrote the court's opinion, and Judges Henderson, Hammond, Prescott and Horney sat with him. The case was decided on December 13, 1960, as Lipscomb v. State, 223 Md. 599, 165 A.2d 918.
He raised two points. The first was that the trial court had been wrong to find him sane at the time of each offense, since, he argued, the evidence of insanity shifted to the State the burden of proving sanity. The court held that the evidence had not raised the threshold question of sanity at all. It wrote that "the presumption of sanity therefore continues operative and is not overcome," and, for that reason, it did not decide which side carries the burden.
The second point was that the evidence did not support the convictions. The court held that it supported the findings on each rape and that each killing was first-degree murder under Maryland's criminal code. The opinion ends: "Convictions and judgment affirmed."
Lipscomb was executed on June 9, 1961, at the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore. It was the last execution carried out at the penitentiary, and the last in Maryland for more than three decades, until May 1994. Any petition for clemency is not on record.
Proven in court: three first-degree murders and three rapes, in three cases, with a death sentence imposed for one murder and the sentences on the other five convictions suspended.
Not on record: the dates on which the three women died, the order in which they died, and how the inquiry led to the arrest of April 18, 1959.
The court papers spell the first woman's surname both Kight and Right.
April 18, 1959: Nathaniel Lipscomb is arrested in Baltimore.
May 12, 1959: arraigned in the Criminal Court of Baltimore and pleads not guilty to each of six charges.
May 13, 1959: adds pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the offense and of present insanity.
December 14, 1959: the court orders an examination by the psychiatric staff of the Maximum Security Hospital at Jessup.
February 26, 1960: after three separate trials without a jury, sentenced to death for the first-degree murder of Lottie Kight; sentences on the other five convictions suspended.
December 13, 1960: the Maryland Court of Appeals affirms all convictions and the judgment.
June 9, 1961: executed at the Maryland Penitentiary.