Rhode Island

Famous Cases

The last per­son exe­cut­ed in Rhode Island was Johnny Gordon, who was hanged on February 14, 1845. It is now believed that anti-Irish sen­ti­ment con­tributed to Gordon’s con­vic­tion. Gordon was exe­cut­ed for the mys­te­ri­ous mur­der of Amassa Sprague, a promi­nent mill own­er who had used con­nec­tions in the state Senate to have Gordon’s pub shut down. Although Gordon’s two broth­ers were also charged with the mur­der, John was the only one who could not pro­duce a strong enough ali­bi to avoid con­vic­tion. Following the con­vic­tion, Gordon received the sup­port of the state’s labor move­ment, which was pri­mar­i­ly made up of Irish and Italian immi­grants. Following the con­vic­tion, peti­tions were filed with the state gov­ern­ment ask­ing for clemen­cy. On appeal, the state’s General Assembly upheld the con­vic­tion in a 36 – 27 vote. Governor James Fenner then reviewed the case, but also declined to grant Gordon relief, and the exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in Februay of 1845. Recently dis­cov­ered court doc­u­ments demon­strate that the tri­al was rid­dled with anti-Irish and anti-immi­grant prej­u­dice. For exam­ple, pre­sid­ing Judge Job Durfee instruct­ed jurors in the tri­al to lend more cre­dence to the tes­ti­mo­ny of Yankee wit­ness­es than to Irish wit­ness­es. John Gordon was grant­ed a par­don in 2011 by Governor Lincoln Chafee after the General Assembly passed leg­is­la­tion ask­ing for the posthumous action.

In October, 2011, a memo­r­i­al head­stone was erect­ed for Gordon, read­ing ​“Forgiveness is the Ultimate Revenge.’’

In 2011, Governor Lincoln Chafee refused to trans­fer mur­der sus­pect Jason Pleau to fed­er­al author­i­ties because Pleau would face the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Pleau agreed to plead guilty to mur­der and rob­bery charges in Rhode Island, where he would receive a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole. Chafee said that expos­ing Pleau to a pos­si­ble death sen­tence vio­lat­ed the state’s long-stand­ing abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. In an Op-Ed piece for The Providence Journal, Chafee said, ​“To vol­un­tar­i­ly let Mr. Pleau be exposed to the fed­er­al death penal­ty for a crime com­mit­ted in Rhode Island would be an abdi­ca­tion of one of my core respon­si­bil­i­ties as gov­er­nor: defend­ing and uphold­ing the legit­i­mate pub­lic-pol­i­cy choic­es made by the peo­ple of this state.”

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Rhode Island abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes on February 11, 1852, becom­ing one of the first states to do so. The abo­li­tion last­ed until 1873, when the General Assembly rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty for the crime of mur­der com­mit­ted while serv­ing a life sen­tence. In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 1972 deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia, Rhode Island rewrote its death penal­ty law to include a manda­to­ry death sen­tence for mur­der com­mit­ted while under con­fine­ment in a state pen­i­ten­tiary. However, the manda­to­ry death sen­tence was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by Rhode Island’s Supreme Court in 1979, and on May 9, 1984 the General Assembly removed the death penal­ty from the Rhode Island Penal Code. Several attempts have been made to rein­state the death penal­ty, although none have made much progress in the state legislature.

Resources

• Department of Corrections
• Rhode Island ACLU
  
• Public defend­er’s office
• Victims’ ser­vices