Fiend

by Harold Schechter

  After a brief, whispered consultation with his associate, Judge Gray explained to the jurors that “it did not require any specified time to constitute premeditation. If the resoluton to kill was clearly and definitively formed at any moment before the act was committed, it would be malice aforethought.”

  As for the second issue, the judge replied that, according to statute, “a homicide committed under circumstances of extreme atrocity or with premeditated malice aforethought constituted murder in the first degree. Either of these elements, therefore, was sufficient.”

  Having obtained these answers, the jury then retired again to resume its deliberations.

  Shortly before 10:00 P.M., there was sudden stir in the courtroom. The clerk, the sheriffs, and other officials began to move about, as though making ready for the entrance of the judges and jury. Excited whispers ran through the crowd: A verdict had been reached—guilty of murder in the first degree!

  A few minutes later, Jesse was led back into the courtroom and seated himself in the dock. Every eye studied the prisoner’s face for signs of his feelings at this excruciatingly tense and decisive moment. But though his very life hung in the balance, Jesse seemed as unnaturally indifferent as ever.

  At precisely 10:10 P.M.—after less than five hours of deliberation—the jury filed back into the courtroom and took their places. The clerk then rose and, following the ritual formula, asked: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?”

  “We have,” came the reply.

  “Who shall speak for you?”

  “Our foreman.”

  “Well then, Mr. Foreman,” the clerk continued, addressing Henry Linell, “is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty of murder in the first degree,” Linell replied with all the solemnity befitting the occasion.

  Though rumor had already foretold this decision, Linell’s words brought a gasp from the crowd. Jesse’s mother buried her face in her hands and broke into wracking sobs. Jesse alone seemed utterly unaffected by the awful pronouncement, appearing so “careless and indifferent” that, according to one observer, “it was difficult to decide whether he really understood what the verdict was. He made not the slightest motion, showing either absolute stupidity or a hardness and stubbornness that was aggravating to witness.”

  Immediately after the verdict, Linnell handed a note to the clerk, who passed it along to Judge Gray. After scanning the paper, the judge announced that it was a recommendation from the jury. Though the verdict carried a mandatory death sentence, the twelve men urged that—because of his extreme youth—Jesse’s punishment be commuted to imprisonment for life. Promising to transmit the recommendation to the governor, the judge adjourned the court after praising the jurors for their efforts.

  The jury’s divided feelings—between their outrage over Jesse’s crimes and their reluctance to execute a fourteen-year-old boy (which Pomeroy himself had predicted)—foreshadowed the bitter controversy that would embroil the public for months to come. The trial was over and the verdict rendered. But in a very real sense, the battle over Jesse Pomeroy’s fate had only just begun.

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  The interest in the trial of Jesse H. Pomeroy has not ceased with his conviction of murder in the first degree, and now continues in the speculation as to his sentence and as to whether the recommendation to mercy on the part of the jury will be considered.

  —The Boston Globe, December 14, 1874

  Like the teenage atrocities that have stunned our nation in recent years, the Pomeroy case struck many observers as a terrifying symptom of societal decay—of the evil that results from what we now call the breakdown of “family values.” On December 12, 1874, for example—one day after Jesse’s trial ended—the Boston Globe published an editorial that (allowing for its old-fashioned diction and dated details) could have been published in the wake of the so-called Jonesboro, Arkansas, massacre of 1998, or the 1997 slayings at West Paducah, Kentucky, where a fourteen-year-old high school student opened fire on eight of his classmates as they stood in a prayer circle.

  Headlined “Keep Children from Crime,” the editorial began by criticizing Jesse’s parents for failing to provide those “restraining influences” that would have “counteracted the natural weaknesses of their son’s moral character.” “There can be little doubt,” declared the writer, “that if there had been proper discipline exercised in his case, society would have been spared the horror of his crimes. . . . Jesse Pomeroy would probably have never developed a high moral character, but had he passed the period of youth under suitable discipline, his sense of the danger of indulging his cruel propensities would have saved his victims and society from atrocity.”

  Because his parents were separated, and his overworked mother was rarely at home, Jesse had been left to his own devices—free to indulge his taste for violent entertainment. Surely, the writer suggested, had Jesse been raised in a more settled household, his parents would never have permitted him to revel in the lurid thrills of dime novels. “Can there be a question,” the editorialist wrote, “that instead of allowing him to gloat over the recital of Indian atrocities, which stimulated the worst tendencies of his nature, the best parental care would have ascertained and corrected these bloodthirsty characteristics?”

  To be sure, the writer was sympathetic to Mrs. Pomeroy’s situation. She was, after all, a hardworking, husbandless woman, struggling to make ends meet. But her son’s case only highlighted the “danger to society” represented by “those who have no adequate care taken of them at home.” In short, as portayed in this editorial, Jesse Pomeroy was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a type painfully familiar to our own day: the juvenile felon whose crimes are ascribed to his broken home, lack of parental supervision, and overexposure to violent entertainment.

  According to the editorialist, moreover, Pomeroy’s case—though clearly extreme—was by no means unique. On the contrary, it was evidence of a frightening social trend. Citing a recently published volume “by the National Prison Association of the United States upon the extent and causes of crime in this country,” the writer was alarmed to note that “one-fifth of all our prisoners are mere boys, ranging from childhood to twenty years. Nearly half the convicts in one prison are young lads, another has nearly a third, and in another two-thirds of all the inmates are under thirty years of age.” Though convicts in their early to late twenties hardly seem to qualify as “mere boys,” the writer nevertheless concluded that this ostensible epidemic of juvenile criminality resulted directly from the absence of proper parental supervision (particularly among the poor) and urged that greater attention be paid to the care and education of neglected young children. By this means, he concluded, “the causes of crime may be largely removed, and the boys and girls who are growing up in ignorance and vice be made useful and happy citizens.”

  * * *

  Other papers, too, weighed in with their opinions on the day after the verdict. Editorials in the Boston Herald, the Boston Post, the Boston Daily Advertiser, even the New York Times, all praised the Pomeroy jurors for their “discernment and courage” in “disregarding the defense of insanity so earnestly urged by the prisoner’s counsel.” The jury’s task had been made especially hard by the extreme atrocity of Jesse’s acts, which (as the Post’s writer put it) “came nearer the borderland of insanity than most crimes.” But by exercising their common sense, the jurors had arrived at the proper decision, perceiving that—for all the “diabolical cruelty of his deeds”—Jesse had gone about them “with deliberation, coolness, and method quite too remarkable to be accounted for by any theory of mental derangement.”

  The papers were also in agreement that the jury’s mixed verdict—guilty of murder in the first degree, with a recommendation that the punishment be imprisonment for life—was a reasonable decision, given the natural reluctance of any civilized man to condemn a fourteen-year-old child to the gallows. Indeed, the editorial writers unanimously agreed that “the jury�
�s recommendation will most probably remit the death penalty.”

  Whatever the final outcome, however, the crucial point was that “under no circumstances, now or hereafter, must the Pomeroy boy go free, for there is no security against his repeating his horrible crimes.” Ultimately, it would be for the governor and the council to determine his fate. But as the Herald insisted, “whether living or dying, society must be rid of the presence of this strange being, whose career is one of the most remarkable in the annals of crime.”

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  I must save the life of that boy.

  —Charles Robinson, Jr.

  At first, it seemed as though, in predicting that Jesse would be spared from the gallows, the newspaper pundits had guessed wrong.

  Firmly convinced that his client should have been acquitted, Jesse’s attorney, Charles Robinson, Jr., filed exceptions that were argued before the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday, February 1, 1875. Robinson insisted that the boy was insane, as demonstrated by his “acts and declarations” not only during the commission of the crime but after it as well. The defense therefore had the right, within reasonable limits, to introduce evidence of his client’s subsequent behavior. In the present case, however, the admission of such evidence had been treated not as “a matter of right,” but as “a matter within the absolute discretion of the court.” And the court, Robinson argued, had adopted limitations that were “too restrictive.”

  Robinson, for example, had wanted to call George B. Munroe, an officer of the county jail, to testify to Pomeroy’s conduct while awaiting the start of the trial. The court, however, had “excluded this testimony, as relating to a time too long after the homicide to be material.” Moreover, Robinson claimed that certain medical witnesses had not been allowed to be fully heard.

  Attorney General Train’s answer was, in substance, that no presumption of insanity could arise by proving subsequent insanity; that the defense alienists had arrived at their conclusions by examining the defendant more than three months after the crime, whereas the question submitted to the jury was whether the defendant was of sound mind at the time of the homicide; that the “limitation of time within which the testimony was to be confined” was, in fact, “purely within the discretion of the court”; and that the defendant’s counsel had acquiesced in the ruling of the court.

  In the end, the court sided with the prosecution. Three weeks after Robinson argued his exceptions—on Saturday, February 20, 1875—Jesse Harding Pomeroy was sentenced to death.

  Early that morning, Jesse was brought from the county jail to the Supreme Judicial Courthouse. At precisely 9:00 A.M., Chief Justice Horace Gray entered and took his seat upon the bench. Moments later, Attorney Train rose from his place and addressed the judge. After reviewing the salient facts—the grand jury’s indictment, the prisoner’s arraignment and plea, the “thorough and impartial” trial, the finding of the verdict and the overruling of the exceptions, Train moved that “the sentence of the law be imposed upon” the prisoner.

  At Judge Gray’s direction, the clerk then turned to Pomeroy and asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced.

  “No, sir,” Jesse answered calmly.

  Fixing Jesse with a somber look, Judge Gray then addressed the young prisoner directly. The verdict had been based, he declared, “upon the idea that the murder was committed, not with premeditated malice but under circumstances of extreme atrocity and cruelty.” It was the jury’s intention—and the judge’s hope—that the punishment meted out to the prisoner “would serve as an example to all others who might thereafter be disposed to gratify a morbid love of cruelty.”

  Once the jury had rendered its verdict of murder in the first degree, Judge Gray explained, “the court had no discretion in imposing the sentence, which is fixed by statute.” It was true that the jury had accompanied its verdict with a recommendation of mercy; but that recommendation, said the judge, “could have no effect upon the court.” It would be forwarded to the governor, but “whether he would yield to its prayer was impossible to determine.”

  Folding his hands tightly before him, Chief Justice Gray declared that it was his duty to remind the prisoner “of the importance of turning your thoughts to an appeal to the Eternal Judge of all hearts, and a preparation for the doom which awaits you.” Then, in the highly charged stillness of the courtroom, he cleared his throat and pronounced the grim sentence: that Jesse Harding Pomeroy “be taken from this place and kept in close confinement in the County Prison until such day as the Excecutive Government shall by warrant appoint, thence to be taken to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may God, of His infinite wisdom, have mercy on your soul.”

  Though the judge’s voice did not falter as he spoke these words, he wore a look that struck several observers as deeply dismayed. Indeed, virtually everyone present—with the predictable exception of Jesse himself, who looked as unconcerned as always—seemed powerfully affected by the awful gravity of the occasion. The great and enlightened State of Massachusetts had just condemned a fourteen-year-old boy to the gallows.

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  Having read, with feelings of pain, of the visit of a number of persons, clad in the garments of womanhood, who waited upon you, praying that Your Excellency would not commute the sentence of the unfortunate being who bears the name of Jesse Pomeroy, I feel called upon, in the name of humanity, to make an effort in his behalf, scarcely daring to hope that my plea will be of avail; yet . . . I cannot remain silent and feel that my hands are free from the stain of bloodguiltiness.

  —E. A. Robinson, Letter to Governor William Gaston, March 22, 1875

  On the following Monday—February 22, 1875—the Boston Globe ran an editorial that conveyed the intense qualms many people felt about the sentence. Few would question that the “boy fiend” was “a most dangerous creature,” said the paper, and that his sentence was “legally just.” But “still fewer will applaud his execution,” for “there is something revolting in the thought of the hanging of a mere boy, no matter what his crimes may have been.” Perhaps the best solution would be to keep the boy “caged for life” with “some guaranty . . . that he would never be pardoned or released until death should release him.” In the opinion of the paper, most Bostonians “would rejoice to see this disposition made of him.”

  Pomeroy’s case, in short, presented a profound dilemma to the average citizen—a conflict between the dictates of the law and the promptings of Christian conscience. “Thoroughly bad, sane beyond a doubt, a cold, calculating, fiendish murderer of little boys and girls,” the editorial concluded, “the law says hang him as a punishment for his crime and for the safety of the community. Humanity says anything save that.”

  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: