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(seq. 156)
[left] Herald - Ex.
THEY COULDN'T M Thomas E. Shaughnessy army, who stepped smart civil war veteran to walk. Farragut av.-Photo by H
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ROCKFORD, Ill., May 30.-Russell McWilliams, 17, will begin his second fight for life tomorrow when rehearing of a murder charge against him opens before Circuit Judge Fisher.
William Holly, veteran Chicago lawyer and onetime partner of Clarence Darrow, will assist B. Jay Knight in the defense.
State's Attorney William Knight has announced he will ask the death penalty again.
Judge Fisher sentenced the youth to the electric chair after he pleaded guilty to shooting a Rockford motorman during a holdup last Summer. Witnesses testified that the boy was intoxicated.
The sentence aroused national protest. Headed by the late Julia Lathrop, scores of social workers and educators pleaded in vain with Governor Emmerson to commute the sentence.
The Illinois Supreme Court finally reversed the sentence and remanded the case in an opinon criticizing Judge Fisher for his conduct of the hearing. The court held he had failed to hear evidence in mitigation.
Defense Attorney Knight asked leave to enter a plea of not guilty. This was denied, as was a motion for change of venue.
"It would be cowardly not to hear this case a second time," Judge Fisher said.
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Storms Halt Diving for $5,000,000 Gold BREST, France. May 30.-(I.N.S.)
(seq. 157)
[center] Rockford paper
[left] PAGE FOUR
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[first column] State Again to Ask Death for Sayles Killer
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Rehearing in Case of Russell McWilliams to Begin Tomrrow
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Hearing of additional evidence in the Russell McWilliams murder case will open before Circuit Judge Arthur E. Fisher at 9 a. m. Tuesday.
Considerable additional testimony in mitigation of the crime is expected to be introduced by attorneys for the defendant. The prosecution will seek to counteract the defense efforts by introducing evidence of other crimes committed by the defendant.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Fisher will again impose sentence on the 17-year-old slayer of William S. "Cap" Sayles, street car motorman.
Reversed by High Court
Re-opening of the case in the local court was ordered by the Supreme court recently in reversing the death penalty imposed by Judge Fisher last October. The Supreme court ruled that the lower court had erred in refusing to permit the defense to show fully the family background and training of the defendant, and his habits as to industry and frugality.
Hearing of evidence in the case was held last fall when McWilliams pleaded guilty to the murder of Sayles. The slaying occurred on the night of Aug. 29, 1931, in a street car holdup. Taking of testimony will be resumed tomorrow at the point where the hearing ended last fall.
Holly to Assist Knight
Defense Attorney B. J. Knight has announced that William Holly, of Chicago, law partner of Clarence Darrow, famous criminal layer, will appear for the youth. Efforts to obtain the services of Darrow, who pleaded McWilliams' case before the Supreme court last February have been unsuccessful.
State's Attorney William D Knight is expected to ask that the death penalty again be imposed.
McWilliams has been confined in the Winnebago county jail since he was returned from Joliet penitentiary following the action of the Supreme court.
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W. T. Rawleigh Named
[second column - ripped] [left] TARZAN AT TH
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Many Branches Of Government Support Selves -JOHN T. BUCKBEE
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Congressman Reveals Some Departments Are Unjustly Criticized.
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By CHARLES O. GRIDLEY
(Register Republic Special Writer)
Washington, May 30.-Critics of governmental expenditure who picture the U.S. treasury carrying on a one way traffic with federal funds in maintaining departments and bureaus are doing a number of the government agencies an injustice, according to figures presented in the house by Congressman John T. Buckbee of Rockford, who finds that many branches of federal activity are wholly or partially self supporting.
Cites Fee Collections
The Rockford member reminded the house that the department of justice during the last fiscal year
(seq. 158)
[center] HERALD TRIBUNE, THURSDA
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17-Year-Old Boy Must Die, Illinois Governor Decides
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Executive Declares Youth Is No Excuse for Murder
[left] SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Dec. 2 (UP).- Governor Louis L. Emmerson refused clemency to Russell McWilliams, seventeen-year-old condemned slayer, in an executive pronouncement today, holding that youth is not an excuse for murder.
Without naming Clarence Darrow, noted criminal lawyer, who had pleaded for McWilliams life, Governor Emmerson replied to Mr. Darrow's argument that to electrocute the youth would be "civilized retrogression." The Governor asserted that clemency to McWilliams would give license to other youths to go out with guns and kill.
McWilliams is under sentence to be executed in the Joliet state penitentiary on Friday, December 11, unless Mr. Darrow and other prominent persons interested in his plight find a further resort.
Governor Emmerson pointed out that McWilliams on his seventeenth birthday anniversary took a bottle of alcohol and a pistol and set out deliberately to rob "because others did it and got away with two to fourteen years." Governor Emmerson declared the evidence showed that after robbing William Sayles, Rockford street car motorman, and seven passengers on Sayles's car McWilliams shot the motorman seven times.
(seq. 159)
[center] IDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1931
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SLAYER LEARNS VALUE OF LIFE
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17-Year-Old, Going to the Chair Friday, Realizes Mistakes
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CHICAGO, Dec. 4 (AP)-Imminence of death is teaching Russell McWilliams how sweet it is to live.
The 17-year-old slayer of a street car motorman who faces electrocution next Friday in Joliet penitentiary, said today that he would give anything in the world to be able to live his life over again.
"I'd never touch another drop of liquor and I'd never look at another gun," the six-foot, shy, friendly youth said.
"Young fellows and girls my age don't know what fools they are to fool with guns or drunks.
Russell gets 10 to 20 letters a day from folk who encourage him and promise to intercede in his behalf. Among those who argued before the state pardon and parole board that Russell should not be sent to th elctric chair was Atty Clarence Darrow of Chicago, who defended Leopold and Loeb, boy slayers, and who appeared at the "evolution" trial in Dayton, Tenn.
"Age is the greatest mitigating circumstance in dealing with a death sentence," Darrow said to the board members. "If it isn't, why do we have laws on our statutes providing special treatment for juveniles? Why do we have juvenile courts and juvenile homes?
"There are 400 killings for every person eecuted for murder," the noted attorney argued. "Which way are we going, backward or forward? Is it to be a 15-year-old boy who is sentenced to die net?
"It is strange that for all the modifications in the criminal laws the last 100 years for the creation of juvenile homes and courts, still we send a 17year-old boy to the electric chair."
Gov. Emmerson said in Massachusetts in the last 22 years there had been two 19-year-old criminals, one 20 and one 21 who were executed. In New York state since 1891, he said 22 youths under 21 have been executed. In Ohio, the numbers he gave were four hanged and 15 electrocuted who were under 21 and seven who were 21.
(seq. 160)
[left] The kind of pleas that hurts one's cause [?]
[center] Reprinted From The St. Louis Star, Dec. 4th 1931.
Russell McWilliams
[left] The electric chair, unless Governor Emmerson of Illinois prevents it, will take the life of a 17-year-old boy one week from today. The governor says he will not prevent it. He has received no recommendation for clemency from the state pardon board and doesn't feel like intervening on his own account. Therefore Russell McWilliams of Rockford may be set down as dead or somewhat worse, since he has a week in which to think about dying.
McWilliams robbed a street car conductor and seven passengers, then murdered the conductor by shooting him five times. It was a diabolical murder, planned in advance in the sense that a robber who carries a gun always has in mind the necessity for murder. If, as the boy claims, he was drunk and only remembers firing one shot, his drunken mind still carried out the orders of a mind trained to thoughts of killing. There is no excuse for Russell McWilliams, except this:
Whenever a boy of seventeen commits murder during a robbery, he is responding to his environment. He is a victim of thoughts and impulses forced upon him by others. That is true even of the mentally deficient. There was no harm in the village half-wit of a century ago.
If Russell McWilliams goes to the electric chair, the real authors of his crime will remain behind.
They will include the politicians whose partnership with crime has given boys an idea that robbery and murder are legitimate factors in the social organization of a great city. They will include the writers, editors, publishers and motion picture producers who have spread criminal glamor throughout the country. They will include the parents, not of this boy himself, but of all boys who have drifted into crime for lack of home training. They will include the selfish landowners, not of Rockford particularly, but of every city where the healthy play instinct of the normal boy has been blocked by the lack of an outlet and perverted into the criminal instinct of the young ganster.
They will include the bootlegger who sold him the booze, the moonshiner who manufactured it, and all the patrons of bootleggers and moonshiners. They will include the prohibitionists who have forgotten how to preach temperance, the parents who have forgotten how to teach it, and all others who have helped to make liquor guzzling a smart pastime for the boys and girls of America.
They will include the beneficiaries, some of them high in political power, of the traffic in narcotic drugs, which gives American gangsterdom its fiendish cruelty and the bravado that attracts young disciples.
They will include those who set false standards of extravagance, make money the measure of all worth and the spending of it necessary to social acceptance.
They will include the masters of finance and industry who have developed an economic system that causes millions of boys at the verge of manhood to look toward the future with hopelessness.
In fact, if all the people who contributed to the downfall of Russell McWilliams were to die with him in the electric chair, it is doubtful whether even super-power America could produce enough juice to kill them all. However, they need not worry. The only one to die is Russell McWilliams.