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Post by fretslider on Jul 4, 2011 16:08:05 GMT -5
John Gordon, who in 1845 was the last person to be executed in the state of Rhode Island, was hanged for supposedly murdering Amasa Sprague, a wealthy mill-owner from an important local family. Lincoln Chafee, the Governor of Rhode Island, said that Mr Gordon had been “put to death after a highly questionable judicial process and based on no concrete evidence”. Sprague was the brother of the one-time state governor and US Senator William Sprague. His killing inflamed tensions between Rhode Island's ‘Yankee’ protestant majority and the newly-arrived Irish population.
After Sprague's body was found brutally beaten on a snowy road on New Year's Day 1844, Gordon and his two brothers, Nicholas and William, were quickly placed in the frame. A local conspiracy theory circulated in which Nicholas held a grudge against Mr Sprague, and had used one or both of his brothers as accomplices in a revenge killing. Six months before the murder, Sprague was said to have used his influential name to have the liquor licence at a shop and pub run by Nicholas – where Sprague workers drank on lunch breaks – revoked.
All three were charged with the murder but John alone was found guilty. According to notes from the trial judge, Job Durfee, which only later emerged, the conviction was based on contradictory evidence.
The prosecution's main witness, for instance, was a woman believed to have been a prostitute, who in court was said to have misidentified John as William, and William as John.
The judge also instructed jurors “to give greater weight to Yankee witnesses than Irish witnesses”, an order historians believe was also crucial in dictating the verdict. “There is no question he was not given a fair trial,” said Mr Chafee, who described the conviction as a “dark spot” in the state's history. “Today we are trying to right that injustice.” Signing the pardon at Providence’s Old State House, where Mr Gordon's trial took place, Mr Chafee said his execution was “a major factor” in his state’s abolition of the death penalty. It was abolished in Rhode Island in 1852, but reintroduced two decades later. It was eventually abolished again in 1984.
Its a bit late, don't you think. Does it really matter now?
After Sprague's body was found brutally beaten on a snowy road on New Year's Day 1844, Gordon and his two brothers, Nicholas and William, were quickly placed in the frame. A local conspiracy theory circulated in which Nicholas held a grudge against Mr Sprague, and had used one or both of his brothers as accomplices in a revenge killing. Six months before the murder, Sprague was said to have used his influential name to have the liquor licence at a shop and pub run by Nicholas – where Sprague workers drank on lunch breaks – revoked.
All three were charged with the murder but John alone was found guilty. According to notes from the trial judge, Job Durfee, which only later emerged, the conviction was based on contradictory evidence.
The prosecution's main witness, for instance, was a woman believed to have been a prostitute, who in court was said to have misidentified John as William, and William as John.
The judge also instructed jurors “to give greater weight to Yankee witnesses than Irish witnesses”, an order historians believe was also crucial in dictating the verdict. “There is no question he was not given a fair trial,” said Mr Chafee, who described the conviction as a “dark spot” in the state's history. “Today we are trying to right that injustice.” Signing the pardon at Providence’s Old State House, where Mr Gordon's trial took place, Mr Chafee said his execution was “a major factor” in his state’s abolition of the death penalty. It was abolished in Rhode Island in 1852, but reintroduced two decades later. It was eventually abolished again in 1984.
Its a bit late, don't you think. Does it really matter now?
