The Woman They Killed to Break Her Husband - April 5, 1951

On April 5, 1951, Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death for conspiracy to commit espionage while FBI memos already on file noted that the case against Ethel was built to pressure her husband, not because the evidence demanded it. Richard Backus traces the chain of fabricated testimony, private judicial consultations, and institutional fear that sent an almost certainly innocent woman to the electric chair, and asks why the template established that day never fully retired.