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Stumpage Reports
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Friday, May 30, 2003 :::
Fun With Capital Punishment: FInale
Today I did what I think was the last of my research for the death sentence commutation project. The guy who contracted me to do this wanted a list of everyone who had their death sentence commutated by the governor between 1909 and 1952. About 15 hours of work got me all the way through 1949. The last three years I came up dry. Governor's papers, commutation books, Advisory Parole Board, Board of Paroles, Department of Corrections, Prison Department, Capital Case Statistics, I followed all these boards, agencies, and comissions, etc through all their various name changes and couldn't make the last inch. But I had some fun, got paid for it, learned a lot about doing research in government agency records, and got to know a few folks in the State Archives search room.
The last couple sickening / amusing tidbits from this project: While looking through one box of Governor's correspondence, I saw a file labeled "Negro Segregation" and couldn't resist looking through it. I find humor in some pretty odd places, and I'm still continually surprised when I'm confronted with evidence of outrageous and what I consider wrong-headed thinking. This file contained some of the most vile, hateful, I-wanted-to-wash-my-hands-afterwards stuff I have seen in my brief career in history. This file was from the early 1950's and contained letters to the governor both pro and anti-segregation. There was some sickening, illiterate, racist, stuff in there. Outrageous comments I didn't even feel comfortable copying down for inclusion here.
Speaking of finding humor in strange places, while looking through some parole records I found someone who had been sentence to two years for "attempted castration."
It did not say if the castration was self-inflicted or done on someone else.
Quote of the Day:
"To the very end," I said shakily, "I heard his very last words..." I stopped in fright.
"Repeat them," she murmured in a heart-broken tone. "I want --- I want --- something --- something --- to --- to live with."
I was on the point of crying at her, "Don't you hear them?"
The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind.
"The horror! The horror!"
--- Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, 1899.
::: posted by tom at 11:09 PM
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