Until You Are Dead, Dead, Dead by Jim Bradshaw

Author:Jim Bradshaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626744035
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2014-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

19

Resignation

“Great crowds” flocked to the Calcasieu Parish jail on the day after Ed Batson’s conviction. People climbed the stairs that wound around the gallows built inside the jail to file by Batson’s cell and gawk at him.1

The steady flow of the curious did not seem to bother the prisoner, who told a newspaper reporter that he’d slept well the night after his conviction but he was worried about his mother. “He was told that she was better,” the reporter for the Lake Charles Weekly American wrote. “He heaved a sigh of relief and seemed to be satisfied. He answered very promptly and good-humouredly a multitude of queries put to him by the curious throng outside the cage.”2

He also made a statement for the press, reiterating his claims of innocence and giving again his account of how he traveled by train from Welsh to Missouri. “That talk about me having a disagreement with the Earls is all mistake,” he said. “We were good friends. I might say, very good friends. They always treated me nicely and Mr. and Mrs. Earl treated me more like a son than a stranger.... I got anything I asked them for. The last time I saw them all, they were well and enjoying good health. We parted good friends with no hard feelings whatever.”3

Reporters also visited a distraught Rachel Payne in her room at the Walker House where she was staying. “She was confined to her bed, and complained of pains in her head. She was asked to speak on the verdict, but the reference to the subject caused the tears to come to her eyes. She was completely unnerved, and had not yet recovered from the shock she had sustained.”4

She said she had been taken unaware by the verdict:

For Ed’s sake, I had steeled myself and had myself under complete control, and would not have broken down, but ... I felt so confident of Ed’s acquittal that for a moment I forgot myself and the shock of the thing took me off my guard, and I weakened completely.... I think they have treated Ed very unjustly.... I do not want to criticize anyone, but I do think they gave my boy a bad brand of justice. I know he is innocent of that terrible crime, and some of these days they will discover the real murderer. If they had not inflicted the death penalty, but had sent him to prison for life, it would not have been so bad for we might some day ferret out the real criminal.5

Batson’s mother said she would go back to Missouri and “enlist the aid of [her] friends in an effort to get Governor Dockery, of Missouri, to use his influence with the governor of Louisiana to have the sentence at least commuted to life imprisonment.”6

Batson’s defense attorneys had the same idea. They released a statement saying they would not appeal the verdict because they were convinced “the record contains no reversible error Our connection with the Batson case is now at an end.

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