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Stumpage Reports
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Thursday, April 03, 2003 :::
I Want This Job
I started another little side-job freelance doing research for someone project today. This is the third of these little deals I've done since I've been in school and I really like it. There's people that freelance all the time as a real job but I think they have a little more getup and go than I do.
This guy wants a list of all the prisoners who had their death sentences comminuted between 1909 and 1953. So after floundering around for about 30 minutes at the archives I found out where to begin. I'm still new enough at this that I get excited when the archivist comes back from the stacks with a huge, leather-bound, ledger book that looks like it ought to hold the secret ancient Sumerian funerary rites. The stuff I saw today was all from 1909 to 1921, but to me there is something positively medieval about seeing the spidery, fountain pen writing on the thick, rag paper. Especially when that spidery writing says things like "sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead" or "sentenced to 18 months on the roads of Edgecombe County."
These forms were pretty bare bones, just the facts. For a brief period during the administration of Thomas Bickett there were little pieces of paper attached to the forms that gave the reasons the governor commuted the sentence. Some of these reasons were "the prisoner has a streak of insanity in his family" or "the condemned has distinct moronic tendencies."
One guy was fined a couple hundred dollars for committing "adultery and fornication." The governor reduced the fine to one cent. I wonder what the story behind that one was.
I filled up three pages of a legal pad with these guys names, and only two of the prisoners were noted to be "colored." I don't know if they just didn't mention race on the other forms or if black people did not get their sentences comminuted. I suspect most blacks suspected of rape or murder became strange fruit before they even made it to the criminal justice system.
I spent two hours paging through these things and was having a blast. I should get another 6 or 8 hours out of this at least. And this guy who is paying me doesn't know I'd do it for free.
Quote of the Day:
It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
--- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929.
::: posted by tom at 10:16 PM
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