1886: Joseph Jackson and James Wasson, at Fort Smith
April 23rd, 2013 Headsman
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 31, 1886
America’s most notorious “hanging judge” Isaac Parker issued the sentences resulting in this date’s double hanging at Fort Smith, Ark.
A much more prodigious body count had been ordered initially by the court, but clemencies straight from the hand of U.S. President (and former hangman) Grover Cleveland averted five of seven death sentences on their eve of execution. All the killers under sentence, spared or no, committed their murders in Indian Country.
In February, 1886, seven men were sentenced to be hung on April 23, 1886, but before that day arrived the sentences of all but two had been commuted. The two unfortunates were Joseph Jackson, a negro, convicted of killing his wife at Oak Lodge, Choctaw Nation, on March 9, 1885, and James Wasson, a white man, who participated in the murder of Henry Martin in 1872, but was not apprehended until he took a hand in the killing of a man named Watkins in 1884.* (Source)
Jackson slashed his own throat with the shard of a vase in an unsuccessful bid to cheat the hangman, and sported a terrible gash on his neck when he hanged.
* According to the Atchison (Ks.) Daily Globe of April 30, 1885, Watkins was a cattle baron, whose widow wife then put a $1,000 price on Wasson’s head. The killer’s arrest ensued promptly. Although Wasson hanged for the earlier murder and not for that of Watkins, the aggrieved Texan woman “was here [at Fort Smith] every term of court after Wasson was brought in, and employed counsel to assist the District Attorney in prosecuting him, having, it is said, spent over $7,000 in bringing him to justice.” (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 24, 1886.)
On this day..
- 1935: Fred Blink, with hatred on his lips - 2020
- 1845: Sarah Freeman, Shapwick Murderess - 2019
- 1941: Harry Gleeson, posthumously exonerated - 2018
- 1943: The massacre of Janowa Dolina - 2017
- 1886: Robert Silas Fowler, lustful - 2016
- 1290: Alv Erlingsson, the Last Viking - 2015
- 1801: Angre Kethi, Polygar prey - 2014
- 1945: Massacres of Treuenbrietzen - 2012
- Feast Day of St. George - 2011
- 1969: Sirhan Sirhan condemned - 2010
- 1992: Billy Wayne White, after 47 minutes - 2009
- 1945: Albrecht Haushofer, German Resistance intellectual - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Arkansas,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,History,Murder,Not Executed,Notable Jurisprudence,Pardons and Clemencies,Public Executions,U.S. Federal,USA
Tags: 1880s, 1886, april 23, fort smith, grover cleveland, isaac parker, james wasson, joseph jackson
