People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1893 — PRISON DOORS OPEN, [ARTICLE]

PRISON DOORS OPEN,

And Convicts Fielden, Schwab and Neebe Walk Forth Free Men. Gov. Altgeld Issue* * Pardon to the Noted Anarchist* A Lengthy Document Giving the Reasons for Hi* Action. BREATHE FREEDOM’S AIR ONCE MORE. Springfield, IIL, June 27.— Gov. Altgeld on Monday issued an absolute pardon to Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden, who were convicted of complicity in the anarchist Haymarket riot in Chicago in May, 1886. The governor’s statement accompanying the pardon contains 17,000 words. The announcement of the pardons was made shortly after noon, but the papers were not filed with the secretary of state until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The greatest secrecy was observed regarding the governor’s proposed action, and even the newspaper men were kept in ignorance until the last minute. Even Banker Dreyer, of Chicago, who had been an active worker in the interest of the condemned men since their incarceration, and who had been notified to be here, did not know until he arrived here why he was sent for, and 'uis surprise can well be imagined. The action of the governor is variously criticised, being sharply condemned by many and by others as warmly indorsed. The lengthy and elaborate review of the case filed with the pardon shows that the governor has spent much time over the matter and that his decision was deliberate. The fight waged by the friends of the condemned men has been a long and determined one, and Govs. Oglesby and Fifer were besieged during their terms of office with constant appeals for their release. The case is one of the most remark able in the history of the government and has attracted the attention of the civilized world. On the night of May 4, 1886, a meeting was held in a hall in Haymarket square, Chicago, to protest regarding the killing of two laboring men in trouble which had taken place in an effort to introduce a rule for an eight-hour day for the laboring classes. The meeting was attended by about 1,000 persons, good order being maintained until just as the last were leaving the hall when a detachment of police were called in to quell a disturbance. tAs they approached the hall an unknown person threw a bomb into the crowd which killed several policemen and wounded many persons. A number of people were arrested and August Spies, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, • Samuel Fielden, George Engle, Samuel Fischer and Oscar Neebe were indicted. Popular excitement was intense, the press, pulpit and public clamor demanded conviction, and after a long and bitterly contested trial the defendants were found guilty. Neebe received a fifteen years’ sentence and the rest were to he hanged. The case went to the supreme court and was affirmed. Finally the sentence of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to life sentences. Lingg blew the top of his head off with a bomb in his cell and Parsons, Fischer, Engle and Spies were hanged. It was alleged at the time that conviction was due to public clamor, rather than to the evidence, and ever since there has been a strong element at work for the pardon of the condemned. Following is a synopsis of the principal points in Gov. Altgeld’s statement of 17,000 words giving his reasons for granting the pardon: The governor reviews the history of the Haymarket meeting of May 4. 1880, in detail, and says the basis of the appeal for pardon was the petition signed by several thousand merchants, bankers, judges, lawyers and other prominent citizens of Chicago, which, assuming the prisoners to be guilty, stated the belief that the prisoners have been punished enough; but a number of them who have examined the case more carefully base their appeal on entirely different grounds and assert: 1. That the jury which tried the ease was a packed jury selected to convict. 2. That according to the law as laid down by the supreme court, both pri#r to and again since the trial of this case the jurors, according to their own answers, were not competent jurors and the trial was therefore not a legal trial.

3. That the defendants, were not proven to be guilty of the crime charged in the indictment. 4. That as to the defendant, Neebe, tho state’s attorney had declared at the close of the evidence that there was no- case against him, and yet he has been kept iin prison all these years. a That the trial judge was either so prejudiced against the or else so determined to win the applause of a certain class in the community that he could not and did not grant a fair trial. The governor sustains the five points specified, and refers to the fact that a number of the jurymen declared candidly that they were so prejudiced that they could not try the case fairly, “but each when examined by the court,” he observes, “was induced t« say that he believed he could try the case fairly upon the evidence. Upon the whole,” says tho governor, “considering facts brought to light since the trial, Bailiff Ryce summoned a prejudiced jury, which he believed would hang the defendants.” The governor asserts that Judge Gary knew of this, but refused to take any action. Quoting the recent decision in the Cronin case, the governor declares that it is difficult to see how, after a juror has avowed a fixed and settled opinion as to a prisoner’s guilt, a court can be legally satisfied of the truth of his answer that he can render a fair and impartial verdict. The governor says that applying the rule laid down to the Cronin decision most of the jurors were incompetent because they were prejudiced and the mere fact that the judge succeeded by a “singularly suggestive examination” in getting them to state that they believed they could try the case fairly did not make them competent. The pardon relates that the thrower o£- the bomb has never been discovered, nor anything to connect the prisoners with the throwing. The governor believes that the bomb was thrown by some one seeking personal revenge He says that laboring men guilty of no offense had been shot down cold blood by Pinkerton men and none of tho murderers had been brought to justice; that in a number of eases the police, without any authority, have invaded and broken up peaceful meetings and clubbed people guilty of no offense whatever. In some cases certain policemen unde* Capt. Bonfitld indulged in brutalities never equaled before, and it was impossible for laboring people to get justice for these outrages. The governor believes the bomb throwing •'■as tho direot result of a feeling on the part of some one who had suffered at the hands of and had come to tho conclusion that he could get satisfaction in no other way. Speaking 1 of Judge Gary, the trial judge, thewffovernorsays: ‘lt is further charged with much bitterness bj those who speak lor the prisoners that tho

record of ths case shows that the judge conducted the trial with malicleo* ferocity and forced eight men to be tried together; Out In gross-examining the state’s witnesses he sonfned counsel for the defense to the specific points touched on by the state, and in the cross-examination of the defendants’ witnesses he permitted the state's attorneys to go Into all manner of subjects entirely foreign to the matters on which the witnesses were examined; also that every ruling throughout the long trial on any contested point was in favor of the state, and, further, that page after page of the record contains insinuating remarks of the judge, made in the hearing of the jury and with the evident intent of bringing the jury to his way of thinking; that these speeches, coming from the court, were much more damaging than any speeches from the state's attorney could possibly have been; that the state’s attorney often took his cue from the Judge’s remarks; that the judge's magazine article recently published, although written nearly six years after the trial, is yet full of venom: that, pretending to simply review the case, he had to drag into his article a letter written by an excited woman to a newspaper after the trial was over, and which, therefore, had nothing whatever to do with the case and was put into the article simply to create a prejudice against the woman, as well as against the dead and the living and that, not content with this, he in the sanqe article makes an insinuating attack on one ol the lawyers for the defense, not for anything done at the trial, but because more than a year after the trial, when some of the defendants had been hung, he ventured to express & few kind, if erroneous, sentiments over the graves of his dead clients, whom he at least believed to be innocent. It is urged that such ferocity or subserviency is without a parallel in all history: that even Jeffries in England contented himself with hanging his victims, and did not stop to berate them after they were dead. “These charges are of a personal character and while they seem to be sustained by the record of the trial and the papers before me and tend to show that the trial was not fair, I don’t care to discuss this feature of the case any further, because it is not necessary. I am convinced that it is my duty to act in this case for the reasons already given, and therefore grant an absolute pardon to Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab this 26th day of June, 1893.”