Hanged on a Doubt: Washington Territory's First White Execution

John Thompson, who was hanged in this city on Friday last, was the first white man who ever suffered the death penalty under the laws of this Territory, and the most deplorable incident of this execution was, that a very large majority of the intelligent people of the vicinage in which the crime was committed and the execution took place are firmly of the opinion that the prisoner suffered for a crime to which the law attaches a less penalty than that of death. It cannot be properly characterized as a “judicial murder,” for that would imply malicious intent on the part of those empowered to administer and execute the laws. But without reproach upon the powers that be, it may be regarded as a mistake of human judgment, to which all men are liable, however exalted in intellect, position or purity of character.

The writer of this has not, heretofore, uttered a sentence upon this subject for publication, and refers to it now for no other purpose than to apply the lessons which it teaches, free from personal censure or criticism, believing that popular respect for law is damaged less by open violation than by mistakes in its enforcement; hence the maxim: “Better that ninety-nine guilty men escape than that one innocent man be punished.”

The law limits the death penalty to murder in the first degree and defines the crime as clearly as language can specify an act which can only be described by anticipated results, as a premeditated, malicious, considered purpose to commit murder, followed by consummation of the crime. Every incident must be complete and beyond any reasonable doubt—the motive, intent, object, premeditation and deliberation—a reasonable doubt upon any one of these incidents gives to the undoubted murder the character and penalty of a lesser crime; if murderous in intent, but without premeditation, then murder in the 2d degree; if a criminal assault without manifest murderous intent, resulting in homicide, then manslaughter. The manifest intent of the law, which accords with the spirit of the age, is that the penalty of death should only be awarded to the deliberate murderer, proved to be such beyond all reasonable doubt or mitigating circumstances.

John Thompson, who suffered the death penalty, was a man of about forty years of age, of ordinarily good habits, industrious and thrifty, and there was no evidence before the court that he had ever before been under arrest for a violation of law. He was of light, rather pale complexion, with watery blue eyes, and a nervous timid manner, which bespoke a sensitive and cowardly nature. He had taken up a claim and opened a farm on Squak prairie and was alternating his time between labor on his farm and following his vocation as a miner at the Renton coal mines. Being at Renton on Sunday, the 18th of February last, he went to a saloon which was a Sunday resort for the rougher portion of the miners, and after drinking freely became involved in a quarrel with a muscular miner by the name of Bennett, who gave him a whipping and afterwards appeared as the chief prosecuting witness on his trial. Some others of the crowd, regarding him as an outsider and presuming upon his evident timidity, taunted and insulted him until he was driven away from the saloon, after which he wandered around in a moody state, going to the common boarding house where he had, or procured a common butcher-knife, remarking to the steward, “I will learn those fellows to let me alone,” or words to that effect; after which he went and sat down on a log by the side of the public highway leading from the saloon to the boarding-house. Bennett soon after came along, accompanied by Sol. Baxter, a farmer residing in the neighborhood, who was a peaceable man and a general favorite. Here the fight between Thompson and Bennett was renewed, Thompson flourishing his knife and Bennett trying to disarm him by superior physical strength, when Baxter, with the intention of separating the combatants, seized hold of Thompson from behind, and the latter, regarding him as a new assailant, gave a back thrust with his knife, giving Baxter the fatal wound in the abdomen, after which he broke the knife across his own knee to keep it from falling into the hands of his adversary, who had the physical strength to overcome him in spite of his weapon.