The Swift and Terrible Justice of the Gallows
A condemned man is rushed to the gallows in just five days, sparking outrage over the speed of the judicial process in Snohomish.
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.
John Thompson was executed this week after a trial that stands as a chilling indictment of the judicial pace in our state. Thompson committed a homicide on Sunday, was indicted on Tuesday, stood trial on Wednesday, was convicted on Friday, and sentenced to the gallows on Saturday. In this brief window, his counsel labored as honest men to save him, yet the law allowed them almost no time to prepare a defense. The indecent haste of that trial has caused the writer to thank God that he is a private citizen. The hope was strong that Thompson would be respited, but the Sheriff proceeded with the execution as the jail walls were hung about with men and boys of all ages, drawn thither by an overweening curiosity to see the sickening spectacle. Thompson was led to the scaffold with a step that showed no loitering. He stood before the crowd and said, 'I call God to witness that though I killed Baxter, I did so merely in self-defense. I intended no murder, and if I had been given a fair trial I would not be here.' The Sheriff drew the black cap over his face and the trap fell. The wretched man had passed over the dark river, and he died with a calmness that was appalling.
“If a man is granted twenty days to file an answer in court for a paltry lot of ground, what time should he be granted to answer for his life?”
While this account reflects a brutal era of swift, extrajudicial-feeling state violence, the underlying anxiety—that the machinery of the law moves too quickly for the poor or the desperate to receive a fair hearing—remains a core tension in our modern debate over public defenders, bail reform, and the death penalty.
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