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John
GORDON
Classification: Murderer?
Characteristics: Anti-immigrant hysteria against Irish
Roman Catholics
Status:
Executed
by hanging on February 14, 1845.
The
last person executed by Rhode Island.
Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee pardoned Gordon on June 29,
2011
John Gordon (died February 14, 1845) was the
last person executed by Rhode Island. His conviction and execution
have been ascribed by researchers to anti-Roman Catholic and anti-Irish
immigrant bias. As a result, he was posthumously pardoned in 2011.
In 1844, Gordon was tried and convicted for the
December 31, 1843 beating murder of Amasa Sprague, a Cranston textile
factory owner. The murder occurred within the village of Knightsville,
Rhode Island.
Sprague was a member of a prominent Rhode Island
family. His brother William was a United States senator. Six months
before his murder, Amasa Sprague had used his family's political
influence to have Cranston resident Nicholas Gordon's liquor license
removed by the city council. (Sprague's employees were habitually
getting drunk at Gordon's premises.)
Nicholas Gordon and his brother John were Roman
Catholic immigrants from Ireland. Nicholas, John and William Gordon (another
brother) were all tried for murder, but only John was convicted, a
conviction based on contradictory circumstantial evidence. William was
found not guilty and in Nicholas's case, held after John's execution,
the jury was hung. John Gordon was executed by hanging in the state
jail in Providence. The court justices, which included Justice Job
Durfee, that were involved in all three trials acted as both trial
judges and the court of final appeal. Included in jury instructions,
Durfee "told the jurors to give greater weight to Yankee witnesses
than Irish witnesses."
Seven years after Gordon's execution, Rhode Island
abolished the death penalty. Although it was reintroduced in 1872, no
executions took place before capital punishment was abolished again by
the state in 1984. In the 1990s, when the Rhode Island General
Assembly considered reinstating the death penalty, Gordon's case has
been used by those against reinstatement to demonstrate the dangers of
capital punishment.
Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee pardoned
Gordon on June 29, 2011, following passage of legislation by the
state's General Assembly urging such action. Chafee signed the
proclamation of pardon at the Old State House, where Gordon's trial
took place more than 150 years prior.
Judge’s old notes shed light on last
execution in R.I.
By Scott Mackay - Projo.com
May 25, 2008
SOUTH KINGSTOWN — It is a 19th-century Rhode Island
legal case that has lived through the ages in the legal and historical
psyche of Rhode Island: the 1844 murder trial that resulted in the
hanging of John Gordon, the last time the death penalty was used in
the state.
The trial came at a time in the state of anti-immigrant
hysteria against Irish Roman Catholics, the first group to immigrate
here in large numbers and threaten the hegemony of the Yankee
Protestants that ran Rhode Island as their duchy.
Now, Christine King, a University of Rhode Island
employee, and Scott Molloy, a URI professor and noted student of Rhode
Island history, have identified original papers belonging to Job
Durfee, the state Supreme Court chief justice who presided over the
Gordon case.
King has carted the papers from one attic to
another in a series of moves over her adult life. The documents came
from her family home in Tiverton, which was once owned by Durfee. King’s
grandfather, a dairy farmer named George Morgan, was proud, said King,
“that he got the home of such a respected man, a judge, a rich man.”
In 1975, when her grandfather died, King took the
Durfee papers, but didn’t think much of them for years. Finally she
took a closer look at them and consulted Molloy, who realized
immediately that the Durfee material would have historical
significance, because the justice was involved in three of Rhode
Island’s most contentious 19th-century trials. Besides the Gordon
trial, Durfee was a judge in an 1833 murder trial that ended with the
conviction of a Methodist minister in the killing of a female factory
worker; the 1842 treason trial of Thomas Wilson Dorr, who led a
statewide rebellion against the Yankee establishment that refused to
enact universal suffrage or allow immigrants to vote; and the Gordon
case and two related trials against Gordon’s brothers for involvement
in the murder of Amasa Sprague, who owned a textile factory.
The notes of John Gordon’s trial are in Durfee’s
cryptic and difficult-to-read handwriting. After a cursory examination,
Molloy says, there “is no smoking gun there” that would provide more
clues about Gordon’s guilt or innocence.
“But this is an unbelievable find,” says Molloy.
“To be able to see the handwriting of a judge who was involved in some
of the most important cases of the 19th century is unusual. It is
especially unbelievable to have this kind of original source material
surface after so long.”
The John Gordon trial especially resonates to this
day. The questions surrounding his death by hanging have long been
cited by opponents of capital punishment as evidence that it should
not be used in the state’s criminal law. Every time there was a
serious attempt at the State House to bring the death penalty back to
the state — the last was in the 1990s by then-Rep. Antonio Pires, D-Pawtucket
— Gordon’s trial is invoked and measures to reinstitute capital
punishment are defeated.
On New Year’s Eve in 1843, Amasa Sprague, a Yankee
factory owner, who at the time manufactured textiles in Cranston, was
beaten to death. Sprague’s body was discovered in the snow; he had
been bludgeoned so brutally that his face was barely recognizable,
according to a 1993 book on the subject, Brotherly Love, by Charles
and Tess Hoffmann, professors at URI and Rhode Island College,
respectively.
Six months before his death, Sprague, scion of one
of Rhode Island’s most prominent families — his brother William
Sprague was a U.S. senator — used his influence to convince the
Cranston City Council to suspend the liquor license of Nicholas Gordon,
an Irish immigrant and brother of John Gordon. Nicholas Gordon ran a
small store and pub near Sprague’s Cranston factory where workers
drank during lunch breaks.
Blame for the alleged revenge killing was quickly
put on Nicholas Gordon and his brothers, John and William, Irish
immigrants all. A jury found William not guilty but pronounced John
guilty after testimony based on contradictory circumstantial evidence.
After John’s death, Nicholas went free after a hung jury refused to
convict him.
“The justices assumed a dual role throughout all
three Gordon trials; they acted as both presiding trial judges and as
a supreme court of final appeal, having the power to decide points of
law without further appeal except to themselves,” the Hoffmanns write.
Durfee gave instructions to the jury on how to
interpret testimony and conversations during deliberations. In one of
the most egregious lapses in judicial fairness, Molloy said, Durfee
“told the jurors to give greater weight to Yankee witnesses than Irish
witnesses.”
“The proceedings were riddled with prejudice
against newly arrived Irish Catholics,” said Molloy. “Durfee upheld
almost all of the objections raised by the prosecution while
overruling most defense challenges.”
One Gordon prosecutor raised the specter of Gaelic
solidarity to explain the murder, saying “the tie of kindred to an
Irishman is an almost indissoluble bond.”
The Gordon trials were held in an atmosphere of
bias against immigrants and Catholics. The Dorr rebellion had sent a
shiver through the Yankee elite, who held Rhode Island in a tight grip
by control of the ballot box, refusing consistently to allow
immigrants and the poor to vote. By the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party,
an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant political party, would control
state government.
John Gordon walked to the gallows from his cell at
the state prison, which in those days was located in Providence, where
the Providence Place mall now stands. Sixty community notables
attended the hanging, along with another 1,000 or so people — Molloy
says they were most likely Irish immigrants — who stood on the
outskirts of the prison but were too far way to see the gallows, which
were in the jail courtyard.
The Rev. John Brady, a Catholic priest, shocked the
elite observers by saying to Gordon before the hanging: “Have courage,
John. You are going to appear before a just and merciful judge. You
are going to join myriads of your countrymen, who, like you, were
sacrificed to the shrine of bigotry and prejudice.”
Seven years after Gordon’s death, Rhode Island
abolished the death penalty. It has never been resurrected, and today
the state is 1 of only 12 in the United States without capital
punishment.
The Durfee documents will be given to the Rhode
Island Historical Society.
“This is a great addition to documents from a
contentious time in Rhode Island history,” says Molloy.
Murder at the Sprague Mansion
Rhode Island's "Unsolved" Mystery
By Nicole Camarda - Riroads.com
Roger Williams was exiled to Rhode Island after
demonstrating his then-radical beliefs on religious freedom to the
settlers in Massachusetts. Williams openly invited all races and
religions to live in peace in Rhode Island and aimed for peace among
the white man and the Narragansett Indians.
Knowing that Rhode Island was founded on those
ideals and practices, it is hard to believe that at one time Rhode
Island was a state full of hatred toward immigrants. It is a sad truth
to accept. Perhaps the most scrutinized and belittled group were the
Irish, being the first of many nations' refugees to Rhode Island. It
is especially hard for us to believe this after years of taking part
in St. Patrick's Day parties and events. But there was time when the
Irish were the subjects of discriminatiton - not celebration.
The Spragues were a prominent industrial family in
Rhode Island. William and Amasa Sprague, brothers, ran a prosperous
printing company. William Sprague, a governor of Rhode Island from
1860-1863, took a small cotton printing plant and made it into one of
the great textile empires of the day. The mill was called "Sprague
Print Works" and located in Cranston, Rhode Island, the administrative
home of Cranston Print Works Company today. Access to waterways, new
technology and natural resources made Sprague Print Works a thriving
business until after the Civil War. The brothers were sitting on a
gold mine, and business was only getting better. Then, out of the
blue, on New Year's Eve day in 1843, Amasa Sprague's dead body was
found in the snow outside his mansion in Cranston.
What happens next is part of the greatest trials
and mysteries Rhode Island will ever see.
Suspicion in the town immediately pointed fingers
at Nicholas Gordon, an Irish immigrant. But why Gordon? Nicholas
Gordon was the owner of a small pub close to the print works factory.
Sprague's workers would frequent Gordon's business on their lunch hour.
As a reaction to his workforce drinking during work hours, Amasa had
gone to the city council and revoked Gordon's liquor license. Because
Sprague was such a prominent figure in the area he had the power to do
this, and because Gordon was just an immigrant, he had no choice but
to accept the revoke.
Before this had happened, Gordon had written his
family in Ireland of the good news of his business and sent for the
entire family to move to Rhode Island and live with him. So by the
time of the license revoking and the murder, the entire Gordon family
was already in Rhode Island. One can see an obvious motive for
Nicholas Gordon to murder Amasa Sprague.
However, given the facts of these extremely biased
trials, the answer to "who done it?" remains in the air even today. It
is up to you to make your own decision about this case.
Police immediately arrested Gordon and anyone else
in his family they could find. They even arrested his elderly mother
and the family dog. The first trial put brothers John and William on
the stand, as they were tried together before Nicholas even had a
trial.
Because this was a capital crime, it was heard by
the entire Supreme Court of Rhode Island at the then-statehouse on
Benefit Street. There were some pieces of "evidence" but no real
tangible proof that any of the Gordons really committed this crime.
There were no eyewitnesses to the murder.
The main witness against the Gordons was a woman
named Susan Field, a prostitute living in a brothel at 20 Benefit
Street. She made all kinds of accusations with no solid proof. When
asked to point out the brothers, she pointed them out wrong saying
John was William, and vice versa.
Unsaid at the time, the owner of that brothel was a
man named Samuel Staples whose brother just happened to be an
associate judge on the Supreme Court. So it is difficult to say if
there were other motives behind her testimony. John had no real alibi
while William claims he had been out with friends.
The jury was made up of all upper class Yankee men,
definitely a trial "by a jury of your peers."
Lots of trivial details entered the court room. A
coat was found at the scene of the crime - some said it was Gordon's,
some said it wasn't. There was a broken rifle found near the body and
there were claims that a rifle was missing from the Gordon home. There
was a footprint in the snow near the crime scene and prosecuting
lawyers claimed it was Gordon's boot print and size.
It is hard to imagine "evidence" like this being
used in court, but back then was a completely different world than we
live in today. Without a doubt if this murder took place today, there
would be scientific proof as to who committed the crime. But, in 1843
juries went with what was given to them and their gut instinct.
The prosecuting attorney even told the jury that
Irish men are known to stick by their family, especially brothers. The
judge also said to the jury that if they came across any contradiction
in the stories, then to think of "the better half" of who testified.
We can't even imagine a judge saying something like that today,
basically telling his jury not to listen to the Irish.
The trial lasted nine days and it took 75 minutes
for the jury to come up with a verdict. The Yankee jury came back with
a guilty verdict against John Gordon, yet found William unanimously
not guilty.
Nicholas had his first trial in October 1844, and
this time there were about 100 witnesses to the same crime that
earlier had almost no witnesses.
Gordon had brought an attorney from Boston down to
represent him.
In addition to murder, Gordon was held and tried on
conspiracy charges. He had valid answers for all questions asked. When
asked why his rifle was missing, he explained that it was hidden
because in Ireland it is illegal to own a weapon.
The jury came back split and a second trial was set
for April, but John Gordon's hanging was in the meantime. The defense
team sent a proposal to postpone the hanging until after Nicholas'
trial, but there was a 36/27 vote not to postpone. John Gordon was
hanged on February 14, 1845. This wasn't a public hanging, but about
60 Rhode Island elites were invited to attend. John marched up to the
scaffold with a Catholic priest, John
Brady. It is customary to for Catholics to confess their sins to a
priest before death, so it is not too presumptuous to assume that John
Gordon told his priest the truth of what happened. But interestingly,
the priest told Gordon, "Have courage, John. You are going to appear
before a merciful and just judge. You are going to join other
countrymen who have been sacrificed by bigotry. Forgive your enemies."
John Gordon died in 20 minutes at the age of 29. He
was the last person to receive the death penalty in Rhode Island. It
was abolished in 1852. His coffin was carried past the Sprague mansion,
and the state house on Benefit Street. He is allegedly buried at St.
Mary's Cemetery in Pawtucket.
Nicholas' second trial was held that April and the
jury could not agree on a verdict. It was a vote of 9 for acquittal,
and 3 for guilty. He was released on $10,000 bail. He was never
convicted for conspiracy, yet his brother was executed for murder.
The justice system of the time was clearly unjust.
This murder will forever remain an unknown in Rhode Island history.
Years later, after the collapse of the Sprague
textile empire, the mansion was sold and used variously as a boarding
house or foreman's residence. The threat of demolition in 1967
activated the Cranston Historical Society to acquire the property and
it is now open to the public. The building houses furniture from the
Carrington Collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society. As the
center of one of the largest 19th-century industrial empires in
America and the residence of Cranston's most famous family, the
Sprague Mansion is the best known historic structure in the city.
