Community Corner

State's Last Executed Man Finally Gets a Proper Burial

John Gordon is getting a headstone and a ceremony at St. Mary's Cemetery in Pawtucket on Oct. 8. Gordon is believed to have been falsely accused of murdering wealthy Cranston businessman Amasa Sprague and was hanged in 1845 after a problematic trial.

On Oct. 8, John Gordon will finally have a proper burial thanks to a Cranston writer's play and some determined state legislators.

John Dooley, who penned "The Murder Trial of John Gordon," a play about the last man ever executed in the state of Rhode Island, said a headstone will be dedicated during a ceremony attended by legislators, a priest and some of Gordon's descendents at St. Mary's Cemetery in Pawtucket.

Inscripted on the headstone: "Forgiveness is the ultimate revenge."

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Who knew that a grandmother's songs about a Irish immigrant convicted and hanged for murdering one of the city's wealthiest and most prominent businessmen would eventually cause Governor Lincoln D. Chafee's pen to mark an order granting his pardon more than 160 years after his death.

It was a song that stuck with Dooley, an author of many books and plays, as well as with his sister Eileen, who was "after me for fifty years to write the story of poor Johnny Gordon," Dooley said in a recent interview.

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To produce the play, which was performed at the , Dooley dug through historical records and newspaper archives and soon discovered Gordon was the victim of abhorent police work, faulty evidence and perhaps most brutally, prejudice.

Gordon was accused of killing Amasa Sprague, a wealthy member of the Sprague Family, who owned the Cranston Print Works and a .

There was a ban preventing Catholics from serving on the jury and the judge told the jury that the testimony of Irish-Catholics were not to be given the same consideration as native-born Americans.

A bloodstained coat ended up being stained by dye, not blood, and barely fit on the tall and skinny Gordon. A prostitute from Providence who claimed to have seen Gordon wearing the coat on the day of the murder misidentified the two Gordon brothers during the trial.

The play caught the attention of Rev. Bernard Healey, a lobbyist representing the Dicoese of Providence at the General Assembly. He began to call for a legislative review after reading the play, and it didn’t take long for a bill to be introduced into the House and Senate.

Rep. Peter F. Martin (D-Newport) sponsored a resolution in the house and said at a signing ceremony at the State House said “an innocent man was forced to suffer the terror, despair and humiliation of a public execution and that society and government will remain complicit if the record of judgment of that travesty of Rhode Island history is not corrected.”

The pardon “acknowledges the failures of our state’s past and corrects the historical record,” said Sen. Michael J. McCaffrey, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill. “In so doing our state is reaffirming the sanctity of the constitutional right to a fair trial for everyone, regardless of religion, ethnicity, heritage, race, or any other characteristic.”

The governor, an outspoken critic of capital punishment, said the pardon reaffirms the state’s longstanding opposition to the death penalty and Gordon’s wrongful execution was a major factor in Rhode Island’s abolition of executions.

“There is no question he was not given a fair trial. Today we are trying to right that injustice,” Chafee said at the signing ceremony.

Dooley's play reveals how Gordon, who was probably an alcoholic, couldn't account for his wherabouts the night of the murder. Gordon was an employee of the Sprague's mill. Instead, Dooley said the crime was most likely committed by another mill worker who was fired by Sprague the day of the murder. That man left town shortly after the incident and was never heard from again.

Gordon's body was buried on prison grounds. His body was moved to St. Mary's in Pawtucket.

Update: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect date of Oct. 7 listed for the ceremony. The correct date is Oct. 8. We regret the error.


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