State of Illinois, Executive Office, Springfield, Nov. 10.
On the 20th day of August, 1886, in the Cook County Criminal Court, August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg were found guilty by the verdict of the jury and afterward sentenced to be hanged for the murder of Mathias J. Degan.
An appeal was taken from such finding and sentence, to the Supreme Court of the State. That court, upon a final hearing and after mature deliberation, unanimously affirmed the judgment of the court below.
The case now comes before me by petition of the defendants, for consideration as Governor of the State, if the letters of Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg demanding “unconditional release,” or, as they express it, “liberty or death,” and protesting in the strongest language against mercy or commutation of the sentence pronounced against them, can be considered petitions.
Pardon, could it be granted, which might imply any guilt whatever upon the part of either of them, would not be such a vindication as they demand. Executive intervention upon the grounds insisted upon by the four above-named persons could in no proper sense be deemed an exercise of the constitutional power to grant reprieves, commutations and pardons, unless based upon the belief on my part of their entire innocence of the crime of which they stand convicted.
A careful consideration of the evidence in the record of the trial of the parties, as well as of all alleged and claimed for them outside of the record, has failed to produce upon my mind any impression tending to impeach the verdict of the jury or the judgment of the trial court or of the Supreme Court, affirming the guilt of all these parties.
Satisfied, therefore, as I am, of their guilt, I am precluded from considering the question of commutation of the sentences of Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg to imprisonment in the penitentiary, as they emphatically declare they will not accept such commutation. Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab and August Spies unite in a petition for “executive clemency.” Fielden and Schwab, in addition, present separate and supplementary petitions for the commutation of their sentences. While, as said above, I am satisfied of the guilt of all the parties, as found by the verdict of the jury, which was sustained by the judgments of the courts, a most careful consideration of the whole subject leads me to the conclusion that the sentence of the law as to Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab may be modified as to each of them, in the interest of humanity, and without doing violence to public justice.
As to the said Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab, the sentence is commuted to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life.
As to all the other above-named defendants, I do not feel justified in interfering with the sentence of the court. While I would gladly have come to a different conclusion in regard to the sentence of defendants August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert R. Parsons and Louis Lingg, I regret to say that under the solemn sense of the obligations of my office I have been unable to do so.
Richard J. Oglesby, Governor.