At the time of my first visit to the penitentiary of my own State the
warden surprised me by saying: "Among the very best men in the prison
are the 'life' men, the men here for murder."
How true this was I could not then realize, but as in time I came to
know well so many of these men the words of the warden were fully
confirmed.
The law classes the killing of one person by another under three heads:
murder in the first degree; murder in the second degree; and
manslaughter. The murder deliberately planned and executed constitutes
murder in the first degree; and for this, in many of our States, the
penalty is still capital punishment; otherwise, legal murder
deliberately planned and officially executed, the penalty duplicating
the offence in general outline. This is the popular conception of
fitting the punishment to the crime; and its continuance ignores the
obvious truth that, so long as the law justifies and sets the example of
taking life under given circumstances, so long will the individual
justify himself in taking life under circumstances which seem to him to
warrant doing so; the individual simply takes the law into his own
hands. War and the death penalty are the two most potent sources of
mental suggestion in the direction of murder.
In every execution within the walls of a penitentiary the suggestion of
murder is sown broadcast among the other convicts, and is of especial
danger to those mentally unsound. As long as capital punishment is
upheld as necessary to the protection of society each State should have
its State executioner; and executions should take place at the State
capital in the presence of the governor and as many legislators as may
be in the city. In relegating to the penitentiary the ugly office of
Jack Ketch we escape the realization of what it all is--how revolting,
how barbarous--and we throw one more horror into the psychic atmosphere
of prison life.
Several factors have combined to hold the death penalty so long on the
throne of justice. Evolution has not yet eliminated from the human being
the elementary savage instinct of bloodthirstiness, so frightfully
disclosed in the revolting rush of the populace eager to witness the
public executions perpetrated in France in the present century; public
executions in defiance of the established fact that men hitherto
harmless have gone from the sight of an execution impelled to kill some
equally harmless individual.
Many good men and women, ignoring the practical effect of anything so
obscure as "suggestion," honestly believe that fear of the death penalty
has a restraining influence upon the criminal class. In those States and
countries which have had the courage to abolish the death penalty the
soundness of the "deterrent effect" theory is being tested; statistics
vary in different localities but the aggregate of general statistics
shows a decrease in murders following the abolition of the death
penalty.
A silent partner in the support of capital punishment is the general
assumption that the murderer is a normal and a morally responsible human
being. Science is now leading us to a clearer understanding of the
relation between the moral and the physical in human nature, and we are
beginning to perceive that complex and far-reaching are the causes, the
undercurrents, the abnormal impulses which come to the surface in the
act of murder. Some years ago in England, upon the examination of the
brains of a successive number of men executed for murder, it was
ascertained that eighty-five per cent of those brains were organically
diseased. Granting that these men were criminally murderers, we must
grant also that they were mentally unsound, themselves victims of
disease before others became their victims. Where the moral
responsibility lies, the Creator alone can know; perhaps in a crowded
room of a foul tenement an overworked mother or a brutal father struck a
little boy on the head, and the little brain _went wrong_, some of those
infinitesimal brain-cells related to moral conduct were crushed, and
years afterward the effect of the cruel blow on the head of the
defenceless child culminated in the murderous blow from the hand of this
child grown to manhood. And back of the blow given the child stand the
saloon and the sweat-shop and the bitter poverty and want which can
change a human being into a brute. Saloons and sweat-shops flourish in
our midst, and cruel is the pressure of poverty, and terrible in their
results are the blows inflicted upon helpless children. When the State
vigorously sets to work to remove or ameliorate the social conditions
which cause crime there will be fewer lawless murderers to be legally
murdered.
Time and again men innocent of the crime have been executed for murder.
Everything is against a man accused of murder. The simple accusation
antagonizes the public against the accused man. The press, which loves
to be sensational, joins in the prosecution, sometimes also the pulpit.
The tortures of the sweat-box are resorted to, that the accused may be
driven to convict himself before being tried; and one who has no money
may find himself convicted simply because he cannot prove his
innocence--although the law professes to hold a man innocent until his
guilt is proven.
For years I was an advocate of the death penalty as a merciful
alternative to life imprisonment. Knowing that the certainty of
approaching death may effect spiritual awakening and bring to the
surface all that is best in a man; believing that death is the great
liberator and the gateway to higher things; knowing that a man
imprisoned for life may become mentally and spiritually deadened by the
hopelessness of his fate, or may become so intent on palliating,
excusing, or justifying his crime as to lose all sense of guilt, perhaps
eventually to believe himself a victim rather than a criminal; knowing
the unspeakable suffering of the man who abandons himself to remorse,
and knowing how often the "life man" becomes a prey to insanity, in
sheer pity for the prisoner I came to regard the death penalty as a
merciful means of escape from an incomparably worse fate.
So far my point of view was taken only in relation to the prisoner for
life. Later, when I had studied the subject more broadly, in considering
the effect of the death penalty upon the community at large and as a
measure for the protection of society, I could not escape the conviction
that in the civilized world of to-day capital punishment is
indefensible. Christianity, humanity, sociology, medical science,
psychology, and statistics stand solid against the injustice and the
unwisdom of capital punishment. Public sentiment, the last bulwark of
the death penalty, is slowly but surely becoming enlightened, and the
final victory of humanitarianism is already assured.
Throughout the United States the legal penalty for murder in the second
degree is imprisonment for life; then follows the crime called
manslaughter, when the act is committed in self-defence or under other
extenuating circumstances; the penalty for which is imprisonment for a
varying but limited term of years. Practically there is no definite line
dividing murder in the second degree from manslaughter. A clever expert
lawyer, whether on the side of prosecution or the defence, has little
difficulty in carrying his case over the border in the one direction or
the other. Money, and the social position of the accused, are important
factors in adjusting the delicate balance between murder in the second
degree and manslaughter.
Various are the pathways that lead to the illegal taking of life;
terrible often the pressure brought to bear upon the man before the deed
is done. Deadly fear, the fear common to humanity, has been the force
that drove the hand of many a man to strike, stab, or shoot with fatal
effect; while anger, righteous or unrighteous, the momentary impulse of
intense emotional excitement to which we are all more or less liable,
has gathered its host of victims and caused the tragic ruin of
unnumbered men now wearing life away in our penitentiaries.
And terribly true it is that some of the "life" men are among the best
in our prisons, the "life" men who are all indiscriminately called
murderers. That some of them were murderers at heart and a menace to the
community we cannot doubt; doubtless, also, some are innocent of any
crime; and there are others for whom it would be better for all
concerned if they were given liberty to-day.
It seems to be assumed that a man unjustly imprisoned suffers more than
the one who knows that he has only himself to blame. Much depends upon
the nature of the man. Given two men of equally sound moral nature,
while the one with a clear conscience may suffer intensely, from the
sense of outrage and injustice, from the tearing of the heart-strings
and the injury to business relations, his mental agony can hardly equal
that of the man whose heart is eaten out with remorse. The best company
any prisoner can have is his own self-respect, the best asset of a
bankrupt life. I have been amazed to see for how much that counts in the
peace and hope, and the great power of patience which makes for health
and gives strength for endurance.
I was deeply impressed with this fact in the case of one man. His name
was Gay Bowers, a name curiously inconsistent with his fate, and, "life
man" though he was, no one in that big prison ever associated him with
murder; no one who really looked into his face could have thought him a
criminal. It was the only face I ever saw, outside of a book, that
seemed chastened through sorrow; his gentle smile was like the faint
sunshine of an April day breaking through the mists; and there was about
the man an atmosphere of youth and springtime though he was near forty
when we first met; but it was the arrested youth of a man to whom life
seemed to have ended when he was but twenty-two.
Gay was country born and bred, loved and early married a country girl,
and was known throughout the neighborhood as a hard-working, steady
young fellow. He lived in a village near the Mississippi River, and one
summer he went down to St. Louis on some business and returned by boat.
On the steamboat a stranger, a young man of near his age, made advances
toward acquaintance, and hearing his name exclaimed:
"Gay Bowers! why my name is Ray Bowers, and I'm looking for work. I
guess I'll go to your town and we'll call each other cousins; perhaps we
are related."
The stranger seemed very friendly and kept with Bowers when they reached
the home town; there Ray found work and seemed all right for a while.
And here I must let Gay Bowers tell the rest of the story as he told it
to me, in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. I listened
intently to his low, quiet voice, but I seemed reading the story in his
eyes at the same time, for the absolutely convincing element was the way
in which Bowers was living it all over again as he unfolded the scene
with a certain thrill in his tones. I felt as if I was actually
witnessing the occurrence, so vividly was the picture in his mind
transferred to mine.
"My wife and I had just moved into a new home that very day, we and our
little year-old girl, and Ray had helped us in the moving and stayed to
supper with us. After supper Ray said he must go, and asked me to go a
piece with him as he had something to say to me.
"So I went along with him. Back of the house the road ran quite a way
through deep woods. We were in the middle of the woods when Ray stopped
and told me what he wanted of me. He told me that he had been a
horse-thief over in Missouri, that his picture was in 'the rogues'
gallery' in St. Louis over his own name, Jones; that it wasn't safe for
him to be in Missouri, where he was 'wanted' and that he had got on the
boat without any plans; but as soon as he saw me, a working, country
man, he thought he might as well hitch on to me and go to my place. But
he said he was tired of working; and farmer Smith had a fine pair of
horses which he could dispose of if I would take them out of the barn
into the next county. Ray wanted me to do this because of my good
reputation. Everybody knew me and I was safe from suspicion; and he said
we could make a lot of money for us both if I went into the business
with him.
"All of a sudden I knew then that for some time I'd been _feeling_ that
Ray wasn't quite square. There had been some little things--of course I
said I wouldn't go in with him; and I don't know what else I said for I
was pretty mad to find out what kind of a man he was and how he had
fooled me. Perhaps I threatened to tell the police; anyway Ray said he
would kill me before I had a chance to give him away if I didn't go into
the deal with him, for then I wouldn't dare 'peach.' Still I refused.
"And then"--here a look of absolute terror came into Bowers's
eyes--"then he suddenly struck me a terrible blow and I knew I was in a
fight for my life. He fought like the desperate man that he was. I
managed to reach down and pick up a stick and struck out: I never
thought of killing the man; it was just a blind fight to defend myself.
"But he let go and fell. When he did not move I bent over him and felt
for his heart. I could not find it beating; but I could not believe he
was dead. I waited for some sign of life but there was none. I was
horror-struck and dazed; but I knew I could not leave him in the road
where he had fallen, so I dragged him a little way into the woods. There
I left him.
"I hurried back home to tell my wife what had happened; but when I
opened the door my wife was sitting beside the cradle where the baby
was. Cynthy was tired and sleepy with her day's work, and everything
seemed so natural and peaceful I just couldn't tell her, and I couldn't
think, or anything. So I told her she'd better go to bed while I went
across the road to speak to her father.
"It wasn't more than nine o'clock then, and I found her father sitting
alone smoking his pipe. He began to talk about his farm work. He didn't
notice anything queer about me and I was so dazed-like that it all began
to seem unreal to me. I tried once or twice to break into his talk and
tell him, but I couldn't put the horror into words--_I couldn't_.
"Perhaps it wouldn't have made any difference if I had told him; anyway
I didn't. When the body was found next morning of course they came right
to our house with the story, for Ray had told folks that he was a
relation of mine. I told just what had happened but it didn't count for
anything--I was tried for murder and not given a chance to make any
statement. Because I was well thought of by my neighbors they didn't
give me the rope, but sent me here for life."
Bowers had been sixteen years in prison when I first met him. He had
accepted his fate as an overwhelming misfortune, like blindness or
paralysis, but never for a moment had he lost his self-respect, and he
clung to his religion as the isle of refuge in his wrecked existence.
"Mailed in the armor of a pure intent" which the degradations of convict
life could not penetrate, as the years passed he had achieved true
serenity of spirit, and that no doubt contributed to his apparently
unbroken health. His work was not on contract but in a shop where
prison supplies were made, canes for the officers, etc. One day Bowers
sent me a beautifully made cane, which I may be glad to use if I ever
live to have rheumatism.
Bowers, like all life men, early laid his plans for a pardon and had a
lawyer draw up a petition; but the difficulty in the case was that there
wasn't a particle of evidence against the dead man excepting Bowers's
own word. But Bowers's mind was set on establishing the truth of his
statement regarding the character of the other man, and he saw only one
way of doing this. Ray had said that his real name was Jones, and his
photograph was in the rogues' gallery in St. Louis under the name of
Jones. Now, if there was such a photograph in St. Louis Bowers
determined to get it, and at last, after ten years, he obtained
possession of the photograph, with the help of a lawyer, and again he
looked upon the face of Ray, named Jones, with the record "horse-thief."
The proven character of Jones did not alter the fact that he had been
killed by Bowers; nor in that part of the country did it serve as a
reason for release of Bowers; and the years went on the same as before.
Bowers's wife had not learned to write, but the baby, Carrie, grew into
a little girl and went to school, and she wrote regularly to her father,
who was very proud of her letters. When still a little girl she was
taken into a neighbor's family. After a time the neighbor's wife died
and Carrie not being equal to the work of the house her mother came to
help out--so said Carrie's letters. And Bowers, who still cherished the
home ties, was thankful that his wife and child were taken care of.
Every night he prayed for them and always he hoped for the day when he
could take them in his arms.
His letters to me were few as he wrote regularly to his daughter; but
after he had been in prison eighteen years he wrote me the joyful news
that he would be released in a few weeks, for his lawyer had proven a
faithful friend. The letter was a very happy one written in December,
and the warden had allowed Bowers to tinker up some little gifts to be
sent to the wife and daughter. "They stand in a row before me as I am
writing, _and I think they are as beautiful as butterflies_," his letter
said.
On his release Bowers, now a man past forty, had to begin life over
again. He had lost his place in his community, he had no money, but he
had hope and ambition, and as a good chance was offered him in the
penitentiary city he decided to take it and go right to work. He wrote
his daughter that he would arrange for her and her mother to come to
him, and there they would start a new home together.
Little did he dream of the shock awaiting him when the answer to that
letter came, telling him that for several years his wife had been
married to the man who had given Carrie a home. Both the man and the
woman had supposed that when Bowers was sent to prison for life the wife
was divorced and free to marry. She was hopeless as to her husband's
release, and tired and discouraged with her struggle with poverty. Her
brief married life had come to seem only a memory of her youth, and she
was glad of the chance to be taken care of like other women, but a
feeling of tenderness and pity for the prisoner had caused her to
protect him from the knowledge of her inconstancy.
The second husband felt that to Bowers must be left the decision as to
the adjustment of the tangled relationships, and Bowers wrote me that he
had decided that the second husband had the stronger claim, as he had
married the woman in good faith and made her happy; one thing he
insisted upon, however--that if the present arrangement were to
continue, his former wife must take her divorce from him and be legally
married to the other man. And this was done.
To find himself another Enoch Arden was a hard blow to Bowers, but the
years of work and poverty must have wrought such changes in the girl
wife of long ago that she was lost to him forever; while the man who
came out of that prison after eighteen years of patient endurance and
the spiritual development that long acquaintance with grief sometimes
brings was a different being from the light-hearted young farmer's boy
that the girl had married. They must inevitably have become as strangers
to each other.
With the daughter the situation was different. From childhood she had
faithfully written to an imaginary father whom she could not remember,
but with whom a real tie must have been formed through their letters;
and Carrie had now come to be near the age of the wife he had left. The
daughter was to come to him, and she must have found in the real father
something even finer than her imagination could have pictured.
Gay Bowers had been a prisoner for those eighteen years, with never a
criminal thought or intention. As human courts go he was not the victim
of injustice nor could "society" be held in any way responsible. There
was no apparent relation between his environment or his character and
his tragic experience. It was like a Greek drama where Fate rules
inexorable, but this fate was borne with the spirit of a Christian
saint. What the future years held for him I do not know, since through
carelessness on my part our correspondence was not kept up.