• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 959 0

as his." He argued, though, that Kemmler was a hopeless drunk and therefore incapable of premeditation. If this was so, the defendant deserved life in prison rather than death. A friend testified that he had never seen Kemmler not drunk, and an employee reported that while peddling "it was their custom to take in with strict impartiality all saloons on the route." One of Kemmler's employees reported that he got drunk with Kemmler on the afternoon before the murder. "He started in on cider and wound up on whisky," the man said. "We had some eggs to sell, but we were all too drunk to sell eggs." Asked to speculate on Kemmler's condition the following day the man reported that Kemmler usually was "shaky" when he woke up, and that the two of them "always went for a drink in the morning." The beer Kemmler bought at about half past eight after killing his wife was part of his morning routine.5

On May 9, the third day of the trial, the prosecution and the defense attorneys made their closing statements, and the judge sent the jury to its deliberations. At ten that evening, when the court reconvened, the members of the jury had not reached a verdict, so the judge sent them out for a full night of deliberations. The next morning the weary jury members filed back into the courtroom and announced that they remained deadlocked. Rumor had it that the panel was evenly divided between a verdict of first- and second-degree murder. The judge told the jury that to be responsible for his crime a man need not be intelligent; he simply must understand the nature of his act. If a guilty verdict required the defendant to be intelligent, the judge impatiently explained, then "half the human family would be exempt from the consequences of crime." The judge's instructions had the effect he so obviously desired. Within two hours, the jury found Kemmler guilty of murder in the first degree.6

Several witnesses testified that immediately after the crime, Kemmler said, "I have done it, and I am ready to take the rope." But New York State, of course, no longer hanged criminals. The court ordered that Kemmler be executed with electricity during the week of June 24,1889. The prisoner appeared sanguine in the face of death. He told his keeper that he "dreaded the long drop and thought he'd rather be shocked to death."7

KEMMLER WAS TRANSFERRED to the state prison in Auburn to await his death. In early June, however, newspapers reported that he would appeal his sentence on the grounds that the new execution method was unconstitutional. His case was to be handled by a new attorney, W. Bourke Cockran, one of the most respected and feared litigators in New York. Born in Ireland and educated in France, Cockran had been practicing law in New York since the late 1870s. His oratorical skills brought him to the attention of New York's Tammany Hall Democrats, who secured him a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1887. Cockran resigned after just one term to return to his lucrative private practice.

Cockran was far too expensive for William Kemmler, and many newspapers charged that George Westinghouse was paying his fees. It was a logical assumption, because overturning the new law would foil Harold Brown's plan to use Westinghouse generators for executions. Cockran had never worked for Westinghouse before, but it was known that Westinghouse's chief attorney, Paul Cravath, often hired Cockran to handle litigation for him.8

Bourke Cockran

Cockran denied any connection. "I wish you would say that I am not retained by the Westinghouse Electric Company on behalf of Kemmler," he told a reporter. "I believe the law to be unconstitutional and inhuman, and deem it due to the honor of the State and for the welfare of justice that it should be tested. No electrical company has retained me, and I am doing this without hope of financial remuneration." Few believed the statement. The New York Times bluntly stated that Cockran was motivated not by "a desire to save Kemmler" but by "the objection of the Westinghouse Company to having its alternating current employed