The only execution in modern Michigan happened at the Milan prison

Michigan was the first English-speaking government anywhere to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes, back in 1846. So the state has never put anyone to death — with one strange exception, and it played out at the federal prison just outside Milan.

On a September morning in 1937, Anthony Chebatoris and a partner walked into a bank in Midland to grab the Dow Chemical payroll. The robbery went wrong fast. Chebatoris shot a truck driver named Henry Porter, mistaking him for police, and Porter later died. Because it was a federal bank-robbery case, the trial ran in U.S. District Court in Bay City, not state court — and federal law allowed a death sentence even where the state did not. The jury handed one down.

That left a problem: a man condemned to die in a state that didn’t execute anybody. Michigan’s governor publicly asked that it be moved out of state, and the warden at the federal detention farm near Milan reportedly wanted nothing to do with it either. The judge refused to budge. On July 8, 1938, a gallows went up at the Milan prison, and Chebatoris dropped through the trap at 5:08 in the morning. He was pronounced dead thirteen minutes later.

He remains the only person executed on Michigan soil since statehood in 1837 — a footnote that depends entirely on the gap between state law and federal law, and on a judge who wouldn’t bend.

The prison is still there, now a low-security federal institution off Arkona Road. Most people driving past have no idea the place holds that grim little distinction.