[Attached to an old, big, oblong stone standing upright halfway up Hospital Hill is a plaque with this inscription:]
DOMINIC DALEY
JAMES HALLIGAN
EXECUTED 1806
EXONERATED 1984“One of the arguments against the death penalty,” said Tommy, looking at the plaque. He didn’t agree with most of those arguments. Reminded that execution was not a deterrent to murder, he’d reply, “It is for the person who gets executed.” But this was a place for longer thoughts. “Like I say, in 1806 being Irish was a crime. Just like today—whoever’s on the bottom of the totem pole gets blamed.” [. . .]
· · ·
On November 10, 1805, a young traveler named Marcus Lyon was found murdered, a bullet in his chest, his skull caved in, some miles south of Northampton. [. . .] Northampton was the county seat, so the case became in part Northampton’s. Caleb Strong, the governor of Massachusetts and a favorite son of the town, was running for another term. He posted a reward of $500 for the murderer of Lyon, an extraordinary sum back then. A posse rode out of Northampton, and on the twelfth day arrested two Irish Catholics, James Halligan and Dominic Daley, who were about to board a boat for New York City. The suspects claimed they were innocent. [. . .] vigorous prosecution. The state’s attorney general came from Boston to perform it. He was running for governor against Strong.
[. . . .]
[The prosecution presented evidence indicating that Halligan and Daley traveled swiftly in the time after the murder and produced pockets sewn inside the Irishmen’s long overcoats into which pistols would have fit, such as the one left] in pieces near the body. The prosecution offered no proof that the pistol was theirs and no other evidence worth mentioning, except for the testimony of a boy from around Wilbraham. He identified the two Irismen. He said he’d seen one of them put the victim’s horse in a pasture, and that the other Irishman had stared at him, giving him a dirty look.
The trial lasted all one day and well into the night. The judges—there were two—had given the defense attorneys only a few days to prepare. The defense produced no evidence or witnesses. The court would not allow Halligan and Daley to testify: until 1866, criminal defendants in Massachusetts had only the right to remain silent. There were four defense attorneys. Three don’t seem to have tried very hard; maybe they were worried about the future of their practices. But one of them, a young lawyer named Francis Blake, made a long and eloquent closing argument. Eighty years later, when they were old men, boys whose fathers took them to the trial still remembered Blake’s address.
“That the prisoners have been tried, convicted, and condemned, in almost every bar-room, and barber’s-shop, and in every other place of public resort in the country, is a fact which will not be contested,” he told the jurors—all men, of course, sturdy burghers, solmen-faced. Blake reviewed the evidence, pointing out that Halligan and Haley might indeed have murdered Marcus Lyon—and so might others on that dangerous public highway. Blake’s oration makes it clear that in Northampton anti-Irish Catholic bias was not so thoroughly ingrained that it was invisible. He told the jury: “There is yet another species of prejudice, against the influence of which it is my duty to warn you. I allude to the inveterate hostility against the people of that wretched country, from which the Prisoners have emigrated, for which the people of New England are particularly distinguished.”
Blake spoke until around ten o’clock that night. Then the presiding judge addressed the jury. He told them that if they believed the boy from Wilbraham, they must convict the prisoners, even though, on the face of it, his testimony didn’t prove much. The judge also described the boy’s testimony as “consistent,” even though the record shows it wasn’t. Then he sent the jury off to deliberate. According to one contemporary newspaper account, it took them “a few moments” to find Halligan and Daley guilty. Several days later, before another packed house [(the Old Church on Meeting House Hill, the largest venue available rather than the small courthouse), the judge sentenced them both to be taken to the place of execution and hung.]
The convicts languished in jail again, for months. The high sherriff, General Mattoon of Amherst, made preparations. He spent, in all, $92.80. [. . .]
[Daley wrote to a Catholic priest, John Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, who came to give them their last rites. He did so in the Old Church with a crowd listening outside:]
Orators are usually flattered by having a numerous audience, but I am ashamed of the one now before me. Are there men to whom the death of their fellow-beings is a spectacle of pleasure, an object of curiosity? But especially you women, what has induced you to come to this place? Is it to wipe away the cold damps of death? Is it to experience the painful emotions which this scene ought to inspire in every feeling heart? No, it is to behold the prisoner’s anguish, to look upon it with tearless, eager, and longing eyes. I blush for you, your eyes are full of murder. You boast of sensibility, and you say it is the highest virtue in a woman: but if the sufferings of others afford you pleasure, and the death of a man is entertainment for your curiosity, then I can no longer believe in your virtue. You forget your sex, you are a dishonor and reproach to it.[. . .]
After church, the hanging. [. . .]
Much of the crowd ran on ahead, vying for vantage points. The spectators covered all of Gallows Plain. “An immense multitude had already congregated on the Plain,” wrote one of the witnesses. [. . .]
Tracy Kidder, Home Town (New York: Random House, 1999). Pages 157 to 162.
(This book is nonfiction, and Laura and Benjamin Baumeister are real people, although we have only the author’s word.)
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