Governor Chafee asked to posthumously pardon
last man executed in Rhode Island

01:00 AM EST on Monday, January 31, 2011

By
Katie Mulvaney

Journal Staff Writer

Rep. Peter Martin, near John Gordon’s
unmarked grave, says of Governor Chafee, “I expect him to love to do this
pardon.”

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

PROVIDENCE — It’s
a story passed down through generations in Rhode Island, the tale of John Gordon, an
Irish immigrant whose execution by hanging spurred the state to do away with
the death penalty.

As the tale is widely told, Gordon was wrongfully convicted of murdering a
wealthy Yankee mill owner after a trial that was rife with prejudice against
Irish Catholics and pitted the upper class against the immigrant class. The
evidence was circumstantial, as told, and the judge biased. Gordon was hanged
on Valentine’s Day in 1845 after his appeal failed before the same judges
who heard his trial. Discontent about his death would lead Rhode Island to become one of the first
states in the nation to abolish the death penalty seven years later.

And now, a state lawmaker has submitted legislation some view as an
opportunity to right a wrong. Rep. Peter F. Martin, D-Newport, has sponsored a
measure calling for Governor Chafee to posthumously pardon Gordon for the
murder of Cranston
industrialist Amasa Sprague.

“I expect him to love to do this pardon,” Martin said, noting
Chafee’s Yankee roots. “We want a statement that says the evidence
was such that we think he was never guilty.”

Martin was asked to submit the bill by Ken Dooley, the author of a play now
showing in Cranston
that details Gordon’s trial, he said. After learning more about the case
than his father had told him as a child growing up in Newport’s Fifth Ward, Martin said he
became convinced a pardon was the only way to fix a grave injustice.

“The State of Rhode Island
created this problem,” he said. “The State of Rhode Island has the responsibility to
remedy it.”

The measure has the backing of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence,
long a foe of capital punishment, and Office of the Public Defender.

“I think it rights a wrong,” said the Rev. Bernard A. Healy, the
diocese governmental liaison who plans to lobby on behalf of the pardon. The
diocese, he says, views it as a teachable moment about “innocent people
getting killed by the death penalty” and attitudes toward immigrants. The
Irish, at the time, were economic refugees seeking a better life in the United States
after being hit by the potato famine, not unlike immigrants of today, he said.
“The same thing could happen today.”

The public defender’s office, too, plans to add its voice to the
cause. “The entire process was very problematic,” said Michael
DiLauro, assistant public defender.

DiLauro, who’s long held a fascination with Gordon’s case,
acknowledges he might not be able to prove that Gordon didn’t kill
Sprague near his Cranston
mansion.

“Given the age of the case and the nature of the evidence, the kind of
certainty that you would get today in a post-conviction DNA-exoneration case is
not possible,” DiLauro said. “But if you look at the record in the
case, the proof that found this guy guilty was not only minimal, but was, at
best, circumstantial and, at worst, unreliable.”

That perplexes some historians. The Rhode Island Historical Society
doesn’t have a position on the pardon request, but welcomes an
examination of the crime and an exploration of the issues it raises about the
state and its values, said Morgan Grefe, the director of education and public
program at the Historical Society.

“The question is, as a historian, is there enough evidence to prove
innocence, or just that there wasn’t a fair trial?” Grefe said.

“We certainly always support looking into the past and bringing to
light as best they can what happened in 1845,” she said. “Sometimes
that’s easier said than done.”

In Cranston,
historians are more convinced. “[Gordon] had nothing to do with
it,” said Lydia Rapoza, president of the Cranston Historical Society.
“He was drunk somewhere.”

The state’s chief law-enforcement officer, whose office is responsible
for prosecuting most crimes in the state, refrained from taking a stance.

“The attorney general believes the decision should be based on law and
the facts, not emotion and historical accounts which over decades can change
and shift,” said Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter F.
Kilmartin.

Mill owner Amasa Sprague was shot and beaten to death on the banks of the Pocasset River on New Year’s Eve 1843.
Suspicion soon fixed on the Gordon family, Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland.
Sprague had had several clashes with John’s brother, Nicholas, about his
workers coming to the mill drunk after buying liquor at Nicholas’ store.
Sprague, the brother of U.S. Sen. William Sprague, convinced city officials to
suspend Gordon’s liquor license.

Soon after Sprague’s murder, authorities arrested John, his two
brothers, mother and even Nicholas’s dog because tracks indicated a dog
had accompanied the suspect. The Providence Journal, criticized for its biased
accounts, reported the evidence against the Gordons was so strong “it is
now settled opinion that they are the guilty parties.”

The Gordons’ trial in 1844 came at a time of anti-immigrant hysteria
against Irish Roman Catholics, the first group to immigrate in large numbers
threatening the hold of Yankee Protestants. A total of 102 witnesses testified
over nine days, giving at times confusing and contradictory testimony. A judge
was said to have instructed the jurors to give greater weight to Yankee
witnesses than Irish witnesses.

The jury returned shortly, acquitting William and finding John guilty of
murder. Another jury came back hung at Nicholas’ trial. John’s
appeal was rejected by the same judges that oversaw his trial.

John Gordon was hanged before 60 prominent Rhode Islanders at a prison yard
that is now home to the Providence
Place mall. His body was buried in a
pauper’s grave in the North Burial Ground after a funeral procession that
drew thousands. His body was then secretly moved to an unmarked grave at a
consecrated cemetery at St. Mary’s Church in Pawtucket. Once a year, the Irish Society
holds a ceremony there, said Father William J. Ledoux, church pastor.

Under the state Constitution, the governor can grant a pardon with the
advice and consent of the Senate. Governors receive 10 to 15 requests for
pardons each year, some written on slips of paper, according to Claire Richards,
Governor Chafee’s chief legal officer. The governor’s staff asks
the person seeking the pardon to provide detailed information about his or her
criminal record, sentence and conduct while serving time. Only one or two
people fulfill that request, and the governor’s legal counsel then makes
a judgment call based on the information they provided, Richards said.

Richards was not aware that a pardon had ever been granted in Rhode Island. She
declined to give specifics about people who requested pardons during her
tenures with Governors Lincoln Almond and Donald Carcieri.

If the House of Representatives backs the
legislation, lawmakers would be expected to provided the governor with detailed
evidence supporting the pardon request, said Michael Trainor, Chafee’s
spokesman.

“The governor understands the spirit with which this resolution is
being offered. He’s sympathetic to that,” Trainor said. “He
still has to follow the rules. … He’ll look at the evidence and
he’ll have to make a determination.”

Sprague descendants are reluctant to weigh in.

“I defer to the historians,” said Robert Cocroft, a copy editor
at The Providence Journal who descends from William Sprague, Amasa’s
brother, a former U.S.
senator and Rhode Island
governor. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”

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