Fiend (31 page)

The
Globe,
however, was only partially right about the humane sentiments of the public. To be sure, the revulsion against
executing someone so young was shared by many Bostonians. But equally widespread was the desire to put Pomeroy to death, both as the proper revenge for his atrocities and as the surest way of protecting society. And the conflict between the representatives of those positions—between the people who were appalled at the thought of hanging “a mere boy” and the equally impassioned group that was determined to see the “boy fiend” done away with—began to rage in earnest as soon as the sentence was pronounced.

*  *  *

Within days of the sentencing, Jesse’s lawyer, Charles Robinson—who was firmly convinced of his client’s insanity—filed an appeal with the governor of Massachusetts, William Gaston. A hearing before Governor Gaston and his eight-man council was set for the last day of March, 1875.

In the weeks leading up to the hearing, Gaston’s office was inundated with urgent telegrams and letters, half of them demanding Jesse’s execution, the other half pleading for mercy. Some of these pleas came from highly imposing sources. No less an eminence than Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for example, sent a personal note to Governor Gaston, appealing for young Pomeroy’s life.

For the most part, however, the writers were ordinary citizens, moved by their passionate convictions. One Charlestown woman, Mrs. M. S. Wetmore, began her letter by posing a difficult ethical question: “By what authority can we as a community rob a fellow being of life?” Certainly, she argued, there was no
Scriptural
justification for such an action:

If we go to the Bible for authority, we find the Lord said, “Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” “And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest any man finding him should kill him.” But in this nineteenth century, this age of supposed Christianity, when our land is filled with Churches where professed Christians worship and with penal institutions in which criminals can be confined and kept from committing murder, we take our unfortunates and deliberately choke the life out them, and then thank God that we are rid of them. God help us to see our wickedness, and to cultivate the God in us, till we behold God in every living creature, no matter how vile; and instead of taking from any the life they possess, may we use all the means at our power to cause such unfortunates to be placed where the spark of the Divine in them may become a living flame, illuming each poor darkened soul till it know something of “Peace on Earth and Good Will” ere it commence a higher life.

While some suppliants for mercy based their pleas solely on Jesse’s age, the majority—like Mrs. Wetmore—made their appeals on religious grounds. Invoking the “name of Him who commanded the one who was without sin to cast the first stone,” a writer named E. A. Robinson humbly petitioned the governor for mercy in the “earnest belief that to condemn any man to death was an offense against the higher law of ‘Him who seeth not as man seeth.’ ” The potential for redemption existed in everyone, no matter “hardened in sin,” Robinson declared, for “while a man liveth, he may mend.” Signing himself as “the friend of the friendless,” Robinson ended his letter with a little poem that conveyed his deepest convictions:

Were
half
the
time
that’s spent condemning sin,

Were
half
the
money
spent for man’s conviction,

Given, freely given, the erring ones to win

To virtue’s path, by
kindnes
s,
benediction,

This hanging by the neck till you are dead,

This cool, deliberate murder by judicial power,

From sight of which sweet Mercy hides her head,

This
licensed crime
could scarcely live an hour.

The gallows tree would be a thing unknown,

And prisons would be swept from earth ere long

For lack of convicts; and the “Golden rule”

Would be the burden of the nation’s song.

To the opponents of commutation, however, people like Wetmore and Robinson were nothing more than bleeding hearts. “Let us have some Spartan justice,” demanded a gentleman named Kittredge, “even if sentimentalists do look with horror on it and set up their imbecile cry.” Another man, Hubert Radclyffe, concurred with this opinion, decrying the “persisent efforts of
the sentimentalists who are petitioning for clemency. . . . If the young fiend POMEROY be allowed to live, he may get out of prison and exercise upon men and women his barbarous appetite to inflict torture. No, the Governor must in this case do what is best for the community, regardless of all sentimentality.”

As for the argument that it was immoral to send a fourteen-year-old boy to the gallows, various writers scoffed at the notion. “Why recommend the Pomeroy boy to mercy?” asked one typically indignant citizen. “O, he is so young, is he? He is not so young, not of so tender years as the babes whom he brutalized and did to death. He was old enough to show that he knew he was doing wrong. Besides abundant evidence at the trial, the jury of the verdict shows that. For if not so, he should have been found not guilty. The verdict of guilty settles the question of responsibility.” According to this writer, the jury—though correct in its verdict—had overstepped its legal bounds in making its recommendation:

Juries have no right, as such, to recommend to mercy. Our whole system of political government and of the dispensing of justice is constructed upon the principle of a division of duties and powers assigned to different departments. Each department should keep within its own lines. Juries are to find and truly say whether the criminal is guilty or not guilty, under the law as stated by the Court. Said the old form of administering the oath to jurors, “If you find him guilty you will say so, and say no more.” The recommendation to mercy is an unwarranted assumption of power. It ought to be treated as, in law, it is—a nullity.

Some of the letters in support of Jesse’s execution took on an actively threatening tone. “There is one thing and but one that will insure your reelection,” a Boston man named A. C. Bradley wrote to Gaston, whose term had less than a year to run, “and that is the signing of the death warrant of young Pomeroy. The contest will be close and such action will turn wavering votes in sufficient number to insure your victory. Neglect action in regard to the young murderer and you are defeated.”

Bostonians weren’t the only ones to get caught up in the controversy. Indeed, letters poured into the governor’s office from all over the country—a sign of the far-flung notoriety that the Pomeroy case had achieved. Some were appeals to the governor’s
conscience, like the brief but fervent note from James Lindsley of Nashville, Tennessee: “You cannot sign this death warrant with the New Testament before you and believing in Christianity. O, temper justice with mercy which endureth
all
things.”

Others, like a letter from Dr. W. A. Mansfield of Winfield, Kansas, addressed the issue of Jesse’s sanity:

I see by the papers that Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, is found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. In view of the mental condition of the culprit, I trust the Governor of the great and enlightened state of Massachusetts will never lend himself to such an inhuman transaction, for the boy is clearly an irresponsible being. Every medical man who has paid attention to diseases of the brain and the history of this unfortunate as revealed in the papers cannot fail to see that he is subject to periodic attacks of monomania. In the name of everything that is good and great, save this mentally deranged boy from so horrible a death.

And then there were those who—like their counterparts in Boston—cried out for Pomeroy’s blood. From Maine, for example, came a letter denouncing opponents of the death sentence as dangerous “sentimentalists”—the same misguided “class of people” who had been responsible for Jesse’s early parole from reform school. Through their “meddlesome interference,” the “juvenile wretch was let loose upon the community and enabled to perpetrate all these atrocious crimes.” Now, these same “sympathetic friends of the murderer” were out to “repeat their work” by securing Jesse’s pardon. Speaking on behalf of the “friends of law and order,” the writer urged the governor to heed the fears of the “wives and mothers of Boston” by ensuring that “the butcherer of little children never again be turned loose upon their little ones.”

*  *  *

The efforts to influence Governor Gaston’s decision weren’t limited to letter-writing. For months, the governor’s office was besieged by citizens from throughout Massachusetts, bearing dozens of petitions opposing or supporting the death sentence. Just a few days before the March meeting was to be held, for example, a delegation of women representing the “Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters of the Town and County of Nantucket”
delivered a petition to Gaston, pleading for “executive clemency in the case of Jesse Pomeroy.”

“We feel,” read the petition, “that although the crime committed may seem to call loudly for the severest rigor of the law, yet the youth of the culprit and the humanitarian view of a future reform under the enlightened sanitary system of correction, prompt us to desire that his sentence may be commuted to imprisonment for life.” At least a dozen similar documents—some containing as many as 900 signatures—were presented to the governor during the late winter and early spring of 1875.

A nearly identical number of petitions demanding Jesse’s execution were circulated during the same period. These included petitions from the Ladies of Chelsea (153 signatures); Boston Citizens (45 signatures); Parents and Citizens of Boston (146 signatures); Citizens of East Boston (56 signatures); Wives, Mothers, and Daughters of East Boston (219 signatures); Parents and Citizens of South Boston (265 signatures); Citizens, Women, and Parents of South Boston (75 signatures); Ladies and Citizens of South Boston (856 signatures); Ladies and Parents of Chelsea (127 signatures); Citizens of Acton, Massachusetts (49 signatures); Parents and Citizens of Malden (150 signatures); and Citizens of Cambridge (528 signatures).

*  *  *

The bitter division in public sentiment—between the advocates of mercy and proponents of death—was mirrored in the governor’s council chamber. Governor Gaston, a distinguished, fifty-five-year-old jurist who had served two terms as mayor of Boston, felt utterly appalled (like everyone else) at the enormity of Jesse’s crimes. But—having determined that, in the entire history of New England, the youngest person ever hanged was an eighteen-year-old killer from Maine back in the 1830s—he was hesitant to send a fourteen-year-old boy to the gallows. (Partly as a result of the Pomeroy controversy, the law regarding condemned prisoners would ultimately be changed in Massachusetts, making it the responsibility of the Court to set the date of execution; in 1875, however, that responsibility still rested with the governor.)

Standing in adamant opposition to Gaston was his lieutenant governor, Horatio G. Knight, a vigorous supporter of the death penalty. The eight-man council was split directly in half, four of
the members strongly in favor of commutation, the rest as staunchly opposed.

On March 31, 1875, the scheduled hearing was held before Governor Gaston and his council. Speaking on behalf of the prisoner, Charles Robinson urged that the death sentence be commuted to imprisonment for life on the grounds of Jesse’s youth and irresponsibility. The prosecution, represented by Attorney General Train, vehemently argued against such action and called for the execution of Pomeroy in accordance with the law.

Averse to signing Jesse’s death warrant—and faced with a hopelessly divided council—Gaston refrained from taking any definitive action. Instead, he called for a public hearing in two weeks’ time, to allow the citizens of Massachusetts to vent their feelings on the matter before the governor, his councillors, and the world.

36

The force of the popular feeling in this case rests upon one of the strongest of our animal instincts: that which prompts to the defense of our offspring. The parent who finds the wolf waiting to ambush his little ones may slay the beast. Not so the parent who discovers a Pomeroy in like ambush. The majesty of the law must be invoked. . . . The law’s penalty
must
be executed upon this the most dangerous criminal who ever drew breath within the bounds of our fair Commonwealth.

—Plea to the governor, April 13, 1875

T
he friends and foes of commutation turned out in force for the public hearing on Tuesday, April 13. Men and women from throughout New England flocked to the State House to hear their spokesmen plead for Jesse Pomeroy’s life or urge his execution. At precisely 9:00
A.M.
—with the spectator section of the Green Room filled to capacity—Governor Gaston, Lieutenant Governor Knight, and all eight members of the council filed into the chamber. A few moments later, the proceedings got underway.