Reddit reviews A Hanging in Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution under Michigan Law (Great Lakes Books Series)

Campus Martius? Holy cow! Here's a snippet of what happened to this guy:
>     A tavern-keeper by trade, he had a habit of getting into the whiskey himself, to violent effect. One night at home, a sodden Simmons picked a fight with his wife Livana and killed her with a vicious blow to the abdomen. The main trouble in this noteworthy trial (pdf, [it's quite interesting]) was seating a jury not completely biased against him.
>     An estimated two thousand people turned up to watch him pay for his crime, and for their “comfort and entertainment” the authorities had “wooden grandstands erected on three sides of the scaffolding, uniformed militia to be deployed around the scaffolding as a guard of honor, a military band to serenade the crowd while it waited for the main event, and vendors to patrol the grounds hawking food, whiskey, and rum.”

Now I know what book I'll be getting next! Thanks for this.