The Mob That Stole Justice in Seattle
A federal judge delivers a blistering rebuke to the Seattle vigilantes who lynched three men in January 1882, declaring that the lawless 'Committee of Safety' is a threat greater than the criminals they executed.
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.
In a blistering charge to the Grand Jury on April 12, 1882, the presiding judge addressed the atmosphere of mob rule in Seattle. He recounted the tragic events of January: the murder of policeman David Sires, the killing of George H. Reynolds, and the subsequent lynching of Howard and Sullivan—and then a man named Payne—by a 'lawless body of men' who broke into the jail. The judge rejected the popular justification that the lynchings were a 'revolutionary protest' against inefficient courts. He noted that in the previous 16 years, Seattle courts had successfully convicted almost every person accused of homicide. He declared that a Committee of Safety, acting in secrecy, is an 'insult and assault' to the people and a violation of the Constitution. 'Woe betides the citizens of that commonwealth which has not strength and will to be the only and ample redresser of their wrongs,' he stated. He warned that if the community continues to rely on 'a court whose hand is putty and a mob whose food is blood,' the city faces a cycle of lawlessness that will only spiral further.
“Woe betides the citizens of that commonwealth which has not strength and will to be the only and ample redresser of their wrongs. Laxness and spasm are alternations of the same sickness.”
This 1882 charge mirrors modern debates over the tension between community safety and the integrity of the justice system. Just as the judge warned that lynching provides only a temporary 'dynamite' fix for crime, today's cities continue to struggle with the consequences of vigilante responses to perceived judicial failures.
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