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RELATIVE TO THE APPLICATION FOR COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE OF MARTHA

PLACE

STATE OF NEW YORK

Executive Chamber

Albany, March 15, 1899

In the Matter of the Application of Martha Place for Executive Clemency -Denial and Opinion

This is an application made on behalf of Martha Place, now in confinement in Sing Sing prison under sentence of death for the crime of murder in the first degree, committed in the County of Kings on the 7th day of February, 1898.

The case was tried in the County Court of Kings County, and a judgment thereon rendered on the 8th day of July, 1898, and the defendant was sentenced to the punishment of death in the manner and place prescribed by law. From this judgment the defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals, and the unanimous decision of that court, Judge Martin writing the opinion, was that the judgment should be affirmed.

No more painful case can come before a Governor than an appeal to arrest the course of justice in order to save a woman from capital punishment, when that woman's guilt has been clearly established and when there are no circumstances whatever to mitigate the crime. If there were any reasonable doubt of the guilt, if there were any other basis whatsoever for interference with the course of justice in this case, I should so interfere. But there is no ground for interference. The accused was condemned as

guilty of murder in the first degree after full and fair trial, although as all men know, a jury in such a case is always reluctant to give a verdict against a woman if any justification whatsoever exists for withholding it. This verdict was then reviewed at great length by the Court of Appeals and was affirmed without a dissenting voice; though this Court always scrutinizes with the most jealous care such a case, desiring that the benefit of every doubt shall be given to the accused. I wrote to the district attorney and to the judge who tried the case to learn whether they thought there was any ground for executive clemency. They both answered that there was none whatever and that the case was one of peculiar outrage, the letter of the judge running as follows:

"The record before you will show a crime of shocking atrocity, followed by another, the attack on William Place, having murder for its object; that both crimes were premeditated and deliberate there can be no doubt; in my opinion the verdict was eminently just; I think the application entirely without merit and I know of no ground for interfering with the sentence."

I went carefully over the evidence, which showed that the accused had first blinded her step-daughter with acid and then strangled her, and after waiting in the house all day, when her husband returned at dark, had attacked him. and endeavored to kill him with an axe.

Her attorneys and her pastor appealed to me for clemency. They raised no question as to her guilt but claimed that she was insane; the attorneys asserted that she was insane at the time the deed was committed, and was now insane; the clergyman stated that she was undoubtedly sane at present but that he believed her to have been in

sane when the deed was committed, although he did not then come personally in contact with her.

I accordingly appointed two doctors, of the highest standing, upon whose professional capacity, common sense and deep conscientiousness I could implicitly rely, and directed them to examine the accused to decide whether she was or had been insane. They reported to me that she was not insane; that she was sane at the time of the commission of the murder and before and since.

There is thus no question of the woman's guilt and no question of her sanity. All that remains is the question. as to whether I should be justified in interfering to save a murderess on the ground of her sex when no justification would exist to interfere on behalf of a murderer. The only case of capital punishment which has occurred since the beginning of my term as Governor was for wife murder; and I refused to consider the appeals then made to me on behalf of the man who had killed his wife, after I became convinced that he had really done the deed and was

sane.

In that case a woman was killed by a man; in this case a woman was killed by another woman. The law makes no distinction of sex in such a crime. This murder was one of peculiar deliberation and atrocity. To interfere with the course of the law in this case could be justified only on the ground that never hereafter, under any circumstances, should capital punishment be inflicted upon. any murderess even though the victim was herself a woman and even though that victim's torture preceded her death.

There is but one course open to me. I decline to interfere with the course of the law.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

LETTER TO WARDEN OF SING SING PRISON

RELATIVE TO EXECUTION OF MARTHA

PLACE

STATE OF NEW YORK

Executive Chamber

Albany, March 16, 1899

O. V. SAGE, Esq., Warden Sing Sing Prison:

MY DEAR SIR:- In accordance with Mr. Collins' excellent suggestion of yesterday I desire to have a woman attendant with Mrs. Place. It might also be well to have one reputable woman physician. The district attorney, his assistant, the two clergymen nominated by Mrs. Place and any other witnesses entitled by law to enter, you will see are allowed in. As representatives of the press I desire you to have merely one representative of the Associated Press and one representative of the Sun and other nonassociated press papers; but I wish you also to see that no one of those otherwise admitted is a correspondent of any newspaper. I particularly desire that this solemn and painful act of justice shall not be made an excuse for that species of hideous sensationalism which is more demoralizing than anything else to the public mind.

Very truly yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

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I herewith transmit two documents from the Superintendent of Public Instruction in relation to the condition of the public schools of Rochester, which set forth a condition so serious that in my judgment it calls for immediate legislative action. These documents describe the public schools of Rochester as being in a shape which must be designated as appalling, because of the imminent danger to the health of the children and their exposure to wholesale destruction in the event of fire; and this aside from the fact that the facilities are so utterly inadequate that three thousand children are left wholly unprovided for. The local authorities have power to remedy this condition of affairs; but they refuse to act. Yet no such condition of affairs can with any propriety be allowed to exist, if a remedy can be found.

Accordingly I lay the matter before the Legislature with the hope that it will take immediate action to provide relief.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

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