The Price of a Human Life
A Seattle newspaper critiques the wildly inconsistent sentencing for murder in Washington Territory, highlighting how local bias and venue changes drastically altered justice for accused killers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Italian assassin Pecani is to be hanged at Tacoma next month for murder. Probably Pecani is wondering why he should have been convicted of murder in the first degree, while his countryman, Coella, was convicted only of murder in the second degree by the Coupeville jury last month. Coella cut his employer's throat from ear to ear and robbed the premises at Port Townsend in July 1890. The following October he was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. Then the supreme court reversed the judgment of the lower court and ordered a new trial. A change of venue to Island county saved Coella's neck. It is a curious mockery of justice where a man charged with murder and robbery is convicted of murder in the first degree, and then on his second trial has his crime of throat-cutting and robbery reduced by the jury to murder in the second degree. In Tacoma and Port Townsend the jury evidently regarded cutting a man's throat in order to rob him as murder in the first degree, but in Island county, throat-cutting and robbery is not regarded by the jury as murder in the first degree.
“It is a curious mockery of justice where a man charged with murder and robbery is convicted of murder in the first degree, and then on his second trial has his crime of throat-cutting and robbery reduced by the jury to murder in the second degree.”
This critique of 'local prejudice' in jury selection and sentencing reflects ongoing tensions in the American legal system regarding how a defendant’s geography can determine their fate. The article highlights that even in the 1890s, the arbitrariness of capital punishment was a subject of fierce public debate in Washington.
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