Three and a Half Years in a Cell, Then a Date With the Rope
Charles Nordstrom crept up to William Mason's cabin at Cedar Mountain and shot him dead at supper over an old grudge. This week a Seattle judge named August 31 as the day the state will hang him — unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in.
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.
Charles W. Nordstrom will on August 31 pay the fullest penalty of the law for the brutal murder he committed on the night of November 27, 1891, when, to satisfy an old grudge, he crept up to the cabin of William Mason at Cedar Mountain and shot him through the heart while he was eating supper with his wife. He was convicted of murder in the first degree on January 13, 1892, but an appeal to the supreme court was taken. That body affirmed the judgment of the lower court, and yesterday, on motion of the prosecuting attorney that the court set a day for carrying into execution the mandate of the supreme court, Judge Humes fixed the time for Nordstrom's execution by hanging for August 31.
The burly prisoner appeared in court in company with his attorney, James Hamilton Lewis, and during the proceedings his stolid countenance lost some of its apathy — whether from an excess of feeling or emotion, or the unusual scenes and views which met his gaze, it is hard to say. He certainly was far less indifferent to his surroundings, if not to his fate, than during his trial. Then he was a big, powerful man, used to a hard life. For three and a half years since he has never been out of his cell, and he has grown fat, pale and flabby. When brought into the courtroom he gazed about him and out of the windows at the scene below with evident interest. Perhaps this beautiful scene was permitted him for the purpose of heightening his punishment, by making him feel, perhaps for the first time, some of the blessings he had forfeited. As the dread sentence was pronounced he appeared worried and nervous, and a look of dogged despair was in his eyes when the import of the judge's remarks dawned upon his mind. His attorney gave notice of an appeal to the United States supreme court.
“As the dread sentence was pronounced he appeared worried and nervous, and a look of dogged despair was in his eyes when the import of the judge's remarks dawned upon his mind.”
Nordstrom's case was the ordinary machinery of 1894 justice: a killing over an old grudge, a conviction, a supreme court affirmance, and a hanging date set within months. Washington abolished capital punishment in 2018, when its own Supreme Court struck the death penalty down as racially biased — but the years of appeals, the long cell time, and the argument over who deserves to die have never really left the courthouse.
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