Arizona republican., 1910-06-05
COMPUTATION OF SENTENCE
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the unrestrained companionship of
/ boys as unframed as himself.
Yet nothing really bad is known
! of his boyhood up to this great
/ tragedy: and there seems to be no
doubt that the crime for which he
is under sentence of death was one
of those sudden obsessions which
| physicians who have studied mental
phenomena know to be Gin various
! forms) not infrequent in young peo-
pie approaching maturity; a momen-
| tary, overmastering impulse to some
act which is repented as soon as
done.
Even education and the restaint
of refined and favorable surroundings
do not always furnish the self-con-
troll to hold the impulse in check.
I Tom Waddin had none of these re-
straints and the impulse which for
moment took possession of him with
such fatal results came as the climax
of a long series of severe seedlings
in which the old man called the boy
many of the names which grown men
have more than once resented by
killing the man who dared to use
them
Ignorant. unframed. undeveloped
in mind, yet bitterly conscious Of the
I injustice and insult to which he felt
that ne had been subjected, the boy
was swept out of himself by an
overwhelming wave of anger and re-
sentiment, and committed the act
which five minutes later filled him
with horror and remorse.
"One can imagine in what a night
mare of fear and terror the boy sad
died his horse Snd rode away to
give himself up to the officers of the
law. He made no attempt To conceal
his crime and after the first supreme
agony and wild effort to escape the
awful thing he had done, he faced
the issue bravely and took the full
responsibility.
His poverty and ignorance and the
poverty and ignorance of his people
made impossible such defense as an
other might have made. He was too
stunned by his own act, which seemed
some awful dream more than a re-
ality. to do other than TO accept
dumbly the sentence of the court.
Even in the face of death his chief
thought was for his people, to whom
he had brought sorrow and disgrace;
for the old father and mother and
the widowed sister who needed his
help. Back somewhere in his I'M
formed childish mind there is
logged courage still trying to keep
things from being any harder for the
folks at home.
Now, no man viii say that crime
will go unpublished, or that danger
Gus criminal shall be turned loose
upon the community; but there is
the full width of human development
between this ignorant, childish boy of
l9 consumed with horror at his rash
act, and the full-witted. hardened
criminal who plots To repeat his
crime
He has suffered more than enough
in the months in Jail and the weeks
i'm prison under death sentence to
make any mans life safe in his
hands. In the agony of remorse he
has developed that sense of RESPONSE
bility which all the surroundings of
his life and which his birth itself mad
denied him-for our civilization today
denies to many a child the right to
be born strong in mind and body
when ii makes mothers drudge and
slave as this boys mother drudged
before he came into the world.
Granting that society has the right
to protect itself from any dangerous
man even by his death, society can
yet afford one more chance to the
man who is weak and repentant. Still
more can society afford one more
chance to a boy weak and repentant
and whose mind and soul have
awakened to responsibility out of nor
ror at his own action"
These being the facts as above re-
cited,
Now, Therefore |, George T. Young,
acting governor of Arizona, by virtue
of the power and authority vested in
me by law in that behalf. do hereby
commute the sentence of death TO be
executed on the last Friday in June,
or the oath day thereof, 1910, on the
said Thomas Waddill, to an imprison-
ment of fifteen years in the territorial
penitentiary at Florence. Arizona, to
date from the said last Friday i'm
June, or the oath day thereof, 1910.
In witness whereof, 1 have here
great seal of the territory to be ~af- |
fixed.
Done at the city of Phoenix, the |
capital. this 4th day of June, 1910.
BY. the acting governor,
(SeaD GEO. u. YOUNG.
r. BIDDINGS,