A New Year's Pardon for the Boy Who Went to Prison at Seventeen
Oscar Bradshaw, convicted of murder at Pasco in 1906 and sentenced to life, walks out of the penitentiary at twenty — on the condition that he go home and support his crippled father.
OLYMPIA, Jan. 1. — Oscar Bradshaw, convicted of murder at Pasco in 1906, received a New Year's gift from Governor Mead today, consisting of a pardon from his life imprisonment in the penitentiary.
He is only 20 years old. His father was recently injured so that he will never be able to work again, and his mother needs his help.
The pardon is conditioned on his working to support his parents and abstaining from evil habits.
“The pardon is conditioned on his working to support his parents and abstaining from evil habits.”
A life sentence handed to a teenager, erased by a governor's signature and a condition about good behaviour, is clemency at its most personal — and its most arbitrary. Washington still argues over how young is too young to die in prison and how much a family's hardship should weigh in a governor's decision; the mechanism is the same, only the paperwork has changed.
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