The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler by Irene Quenzler Brown Richard D. Brown

Author:Irene Quenzler Brown, Richard D. Brown [Irene Quenzler Brown, Richard D. Brown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 19th Century, Social Science, Violence in Society, Sociology, Marriage & Family
ISBN: 9780674249240
Google: duX4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2005-04-30T22:27:23+00:00

When it came to particular cases, deciding whether to hang or to pardon required state executive officers to consider justice not only according to the law, as the trial had done, but also more broadly. Their task was to consider justice in its fullest implications, for society as well as individuals. As in England, whose practices continued to influence American legal culture, officials viewed the pardoning process as crucial not only for reconciling justice and mercy, but also for maintaining public confidence in both the law and the state by softening some of the law’s harshest consequences.

What were the ingredients of successful petitions? For colonial and early republican America very little is known. But eighteenth-century English experience supplies some background for assessing decisions in Massachusetts. A study of hundreds of English petitions from the years 1787 and 1790 reveals the factors that authorities weighed when they considered pardons: reputation for good character; motive; and whether the convicted person might be the victim of a malicious prosecution that created an injustice. In addition, English officials noted mitigating circumstances such as youth, prior military service, the need to support a family, and whether the convict was fully responsible at the time of the offense owing to drink, insanity, or some other mental handicap. English authorities, like their Massachusetts counterparts, were not eager to hang criminals.32

Still, many English pardon petitions failed. When the convict’s bad character, aggravated violence, betrayal of trust, or prior criminal behavior would make his execution a powerful example to others, officials allowed public hangings to proceed. An eighteenth-century jurist expressed the prevailing belief that “the prisoners selected for capital punishment as an example to others should be chosen from the dangerous and incorrigible offenders.”33 Being convicted of a capital crime was not, by itself, sufficient for an execution.

The same considerations were evident in the Massachusetts pardoning process, although the death penalty was used sparingly compared to England, so most Massachusetts pardons concerned lesser crimes and only affected the extent of physical punishment or the length of prison terms, not life and death. Whereas English statutes identified over two hundred capital crimes, in Massachusetts the law called for hanging in only seven types of crime: arson or burglary at night; highway robbery; murder; rape; sodomy (reduced to a life prison term in 1805); and treason.34 As a result Massachusetts officials considered pardons for only a small number of capital cases, and each of these involved a crime that society recognized as major.

During the decade before the governor and council evaluated Ephraim Wheeler’s pardon, they had three times chosen to save the lives of men who were headed for the gallows. The first case, that of eighty-five-year-old physician John Farrell, suggests the power of petitions. In September 1796 the old man was indicted for “a venereal affair with a certain, female Brute Animal called a Bitch” and charged with “that detestable & abominable Crime of Sodomy (not to be named among christians) to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the great scandal of all human kind … and against the Law, and Order of Nature.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.