Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-02
JUSTICE AT FORT sM ITH.
The Galloxgs There and the Grim 0l
 Haugman Kha 0narates It

| Hangnan Who Operates 1t,
 Fort Smith (Ark Letter to the Chicago Tribune
 The court at Fort Smith is one of the
 1 most noted in the world, chiefly because of ! the large number of criminal cases that stain | its dockets. Not less than fifteen hundred ! criminals are brought before it for trial eve-
 ry year, and an average of fifty of them are charged with murder. Judge Parker, who l has presided over the court for fifteen years, has during that time disposed of eight hun. dred and forty-seven murder cases. He has pronounced the death sentencs on one hun. dred and sixty-two convicted murderers, seventy-one of whom were hanged just out side his court room, the others being par- doned by the President or receiving commit tation of sentence. There promises to be an unusually large number of hangings this year. There has already been one, and there are to be six hanged in bunch April 18th, sentence having been pronounced 8 few weeks ago at the close of the last term There are now in the Federal prison forty seven prisoners awaiting trial for murder, and depu ties are on their way here with if teen or twenty more.
 The court has almost exclusive jurisdiction over the Indian territory and is the only ter TOT that the desperadoes of that crime infes- ted country know. Take 1t away and crime would run rampant As 1t is forty mounted deputy marshsls are kept busy the year round making arrests, and the court grinds without cessation from one years end to the other. The docket Is never cleared. One term runs into the next, and sessions are of ten held until midnight. There are no vaca- tions. Most of the trials are for criminal ofenses, ranging all the way from selling liquor to murder, and the punishment is se- were. For merely taking bottle of whis- key into the territory men are sent to prison for three months. A horse-thief generally gets ten years in the penitentiary, and hang- ing h almost invariably the verdict in the case of convicted murderer. Rape is pun | ished by death. Judge Parker, personally 6 pleasant and genial gentleman. and not at all the stern magistrate one might expect, says that severe punishment is absolutely necessary in order to hold the criminals of the Indian country ia check, and as so many ! escape through lack of evideace, he almost invariably, in case of conviction, pronounces the extreme sentence allowed by law. At the time he was assigned to the court mur- l ders in the territory averaged nearly one day, and in order to check them he began his first term by pronouncing the death sen- | tence on every convicted murderer that came before him. At the close of his first year he | had sent about two hundred to the peniten- tiary, many of them for life. The despera- does became terror-stricken, and some of them, rather than come before him for trial, killed themselves.
 Within an easy stone's throw of the prison men who have been hanged by order of Judge Parker were executed.
 This terrible instrument of death is rude scaffold of rough-hswn timber supporting large platform. In the middle of the plat form is a double set of trapdoors that drop gallows is large enough to permit the hang ing of eleven men at one time, but so far the executions have been limited to eight. The condemned stand upon the trap, and ropes suspended from beam immediately over head are made fast around their necks. Af-
 ter the black caps are arranged the execution: CT, standing on the platform in full view of the audience, gives the lever twist, and the door drops, shooting the poor wretches downward until the slack of the ropes is spent and their necks are broken. George Maledon, gray haired Yankee, is the execu- tor, and he has personally hanged every one of the seventy-one murderers who have been launched into eternity from this gallows. Maledon is quite character and has got the business of hanging reduced to 8 science. He likes to talk about his work and exhib- it his skill in tying hangman's moose, and ne proudly boasts of the fact that he has never done a bungling job or failed in breaking the neck of his victims. When asked if he was never haunted by the ghosts of men he had hanged, he laughed and said he guessed all the murderers he
 ! had stretched were writhing in flames and
 l couldn't get out long enough to haunt any ! one. But despite his seeming bravado, peo-
 ple who have assisted him at executions say
 | thst every time he drops the trap his face is
 as white as death, and sometimes he shakes
 50 that he can scarcely summon sufficient
 strength to move the lever. s