Warden Fogarty, of the Indiana state prison, wrote: “I have no knowledge, personally, of the execution of an innocent person; however, I have no doubt whatever that some innocent men have been executed.”
To the second question, however, a number of prison officials answered “Yes,” qualifying their statements by answering question No. 3 with a negative answer. For instance, Warden McClaughry, of the government prison, answered, “Yes, a very few,” adding, “In no case could the party have been called worthy.”
Warden Alston, of Wyoming, says: “Yes. I am confident that I know of one man in our state who was convicted and sent here who was innocent. But,” adds the warden, in answering No. 3, “he was of a drunken disposition, and had he been a sober man would never even have been suspected or accused.”
Warden Russell, of Marquette, writes: “I don’t think from my experience as a warden of this prison that the courts make many mistakes.” However, Dr. Gilmour, of Toronto, answers question No. 2 “Yes,” and adds as an answer to No. 3: “Most worthy, and results sadder than sad.” Superintendent C. C. McClaughry, of Boonville, Mo., answers “Yes” to both No. 2 and No. 3.
Warden Fuller, of Ionia, Mich., writes: “During the seventeen years I have been warden I know of only one case of wrongful conviction for offences against property. One prisoner was sent here for stealing a cow, and another prisoner afterward confessed that he had committed the crime charged against the other man, in order to get rid of the man with whose wife he was infatuated.”
Warden Fogarty, of Indiana state prison, writes: “I have not been convinced by subsequent development that any man convicted and sentenced here for a heinous crime is innocent.”
The case from the western penitentiary, Pittsburgh, wherein a prisoner who served fifteen years was pardoned, was pensioned by Carnegie and heralded as innocent, is treated in the following report: “Your committee had previously taken pains to write to the warden of the prison mentioned, but the information elicited did not indicate that the prisoner had been declared innocent, but was to the effect that the man had been discharged in the usual way—on recommendation—some doubt having been raised.”
The writer of the report says: “The writer has for some years made it a practice to follow up the correspondence or otherwise the most widely published and sensational accounts of hardships experienced by innocent persons under judicial conviction, and has been surprised at the meagre ground upon which such reports rest, though he finds that they are quite generally credited by the reading public.
“Perhaps his (the secretary’s) report may tend to establish confidence in the courts on the part of those who are not informed and who have neither the means nor the time, even if they have the inclination, to inform themselves, and it might be a good beginning in the effort on the part of the institutions to be understood by the public.”