In 1892, Isaac Bruce was falsely accused of rape. He was almost lynched by a mob and was sentenced to be hanged by the state. Bruce’s journey through the legal system, reconstructed from old newspaper clippings and historical records, demonstrates how standards of fairness have evolved but also how some of the same troubling questions about justice remain more than a century later.
His story continues.
WAXAHACHIE — Death stalked Isaac Bruce in a dim, tiny, tomblike cell beneath the Ellis County jail.
The ceiling of the claustrophobic 6-by-8-foot room was corrugated steel, the brown sandstone walls cold and foreboding. Iron rings for chaining inmates dotted the walls.
Bruce, a black man in his 20s, had been convicted after a three-day trial of raping a white girl, 16-year-old Ella Sherrill, in nearby Hillsboro. Ella had picked Bruce out of a lineup of more than a half dozen black men who had been rounded up in the hours after the attack.
Bruce had been at church and with friends when Ella encountered her attacker. His appearance was far different from how she and others had described her assailant.
Now, he awaited his hanging in Ellis County, where he’d been moved after a fire destroyed the Hill County jail a few days after his trial.
At first, he was in a cell on the ground or second floor of the brick building, where iron bars covered large windows. The cell, for one or two people, held cots and a “water closet” with access controlled by a rotary mechanism that allowed jailers to move one prisoner at a time to prevent escapes.
If anyone did escape, chances are they wouldn’t get far: An iron fence surrounded the property, and bloodhounds sometimes patrolled the yard.
When the execution clock started ticking in November, Bruce’s attorneys asked for a new trial.
His attorneys cited lack of preparation time, the judge’s decision to allow testimony about Ella’s reaction during the lineup — she shuddered — and the use of prejudicial language. For example, the county attorney said in his closing arguments, “I appeal to you gentlemen of the jury as you love the chastity of female virtue as you would protect the women of the land from Negro rapists I appeal to you to convict this Negro.”
Those motions were rejected quickly by the trial court. Then, a newly created court that convened for the first time shortly before Bruce’s trial — the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — took up case No. 15.
The court rendered its decision in March 1893.
Testimony of Bruce’s alibi witnesses, if true, “unquestionably proves appellant was not the guilty party,” wrote Judge Eldred Simkins, a co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida and one of three judges on the panel. But he added: “The jury did not believe one word of it. … We see no reason for disturbing the verdict.”
An execution order quickly followed: Between the hours of 11 a.m. and sunset on May 20, Bruce was to be “hung by the neck until he is dead.”
On April 29, he was placed on death watch, taking up residence in the depressing basement cell, spending two weeks awaiting the noose.
In Hogg’s hands
Despite long odds, Bruce never gave up hope. On April 11, he’d written to Gov. James Hogg from the jail in Waxahachie:
Highly Honored Sir:
I am here in jail and sentenced to hang and now I has come to you for mercy. … I dont think I had a fair trial at all. I proved where I was at every hour. … Som of the same men that wanted to mob me was on my juror. now do you think that was a fair trial. Dear govner please help me for I am no more guilty than you are and why should my life be taken from me. …
Hogg was overwhelmed by clemency requests. In 1893, more than half the state’s 3,600 prison inmates filed petitions. The governor, who had sole responsibility for the process, disposed of only a fourth of them. Granting clemency was not unusual, but the decision to do so — particularly in a case that generated headlines across the country — took time.
And time was one thing Bruce didn’t have.
As Bruce awaited execution, Hillsboro officials moved forward with plans for the hanging. It was to be held “in some private place within the city of Hillsboro … to be selected by the sheriff,” the death warrant said.
Sometimes, “private” meant a jail stairwell. At other times, it meant erecting a fence around an outdoor gallows. Witnesses to private executions often received tickets or invitations: “You are cordially invited to attend the hanging of….” Uninvited spectators climbed trees or clambered atop nearby roofs.
Public or private, executions were spectacles, drawing large crowds of men, women and children.
Gallows construction started a few days before the scheduled hanging. When the condemned man climbed the scaffolding, he was often wearing a new suit provided by the sheriff. He was given a last meal and often a smoke and glass of whiskey.
On the scaffolding, a clergyman would offer a prayer and Bible readings. A church choir would sing hymns. “Last words” often consisted of rambling speeches peppered with shout-outs to friends or expressions of thanks.
To ensure the hanging was humane, conscientious sheriffs stretched the rope with weights ahead of time. Sometimes a “well-tested” rope was loaned from one sheriff to another.
At least once, the rope broke, flinging the body into the crowd. The man was revived and hanged again. Occasionally, a body would be decapitated.
The prisoner’s hands and feet were bound and a dark cloth bag placed over his head. If the execution went smoothly, the condemned fell 4 to 10 feet when the trap door opened, snapping the neck cleanly. But sometimes the prisoner strangled to death, taking an agonizing quarter hour or longer to die.
Despite the horrors of hanging, Bruce slept and ate well in the days before his scheduled execution. He said he was “prepared to meet his God in heaven” and smiled “occasionally when not talking directly of his impending doom,” according to a news clipping.
But Bruce also continued to “positively assert his innocence” and still hoped for aid from Gov. Hogg.
Born in 1851 near Rusk, Hogg was elected attorney general in 1886 after stints as county and district attorney and became the state’s first native governor in 1890. He earned a respectable political reputation, but history probably best remembers him for saddling his only daughter with the unfortunate name of Ima.
While Bruce was under death watch, some Hill County residents were having second thoughts about the verdict. The county’s black community of about 2,100 people raised money to pay Bruce’s attorneys to seek commutation.
They gathered signatures on a petition saying they supported law and order but that the threat of mob violence hampered Bruce’s right to a fair trial. They wrote that the evidence showed him to be “an innocent negro.”
About the same time, white residents — including farmers, merchants, blacksmiths, bankers and druggists — signed a petition saying that “fever of excitement and prejudices” had ignited Hillsboro, but now it appeared “the defendant is probably not guilty.”
Former mayor J.E. Ballard wrote to Hogg, saying, “There is in my mind, and that of many others, a well founded and reasonable doubt of the guilt of the condemned man.”
In nearby Whitney, about 55 citizens signed a petition, saying, “We entertain grave doubts that he did this act.”
Bruce’s two trial attorneys went to Austin to talk to Hogg, wrote a clemency application and obtained signatures on Bruce’s behalf. Before even receiving Bruce’s letter, Hogg’s administration had launched an investigation.
Sherriff Cox replied in a letter to Hogg that his questions were hard to answer, but he thought Bruce had a fair jury “uninfluenced by public opinion.” Bruce had a strong alibi, he noted, but still could have committed the crime.
“Pardon me for not saying more,” wrote Cox, who had stood against his neighbors on Bruce’s behalf when a mob wanted to lynch him. Now he wrote that the case had placed him in a “trying position” from the beginning.
The prosecutor, who had also protected Bruce from the mob, replied that he was convinced of Bruce’s guilt and the fairness of his trial but admitted the possibility that the state’s eyewitnesses could be mistaken.
On May 13, a week before the scheduled hanging, Hogg released a letter published in area newspapers: “This is a remarkable case. Its gravity demands more than ordinary notice. … While it is possible that the negro Bruce may have committed the offense, I entertain serious doubts of it. … The whole case turns on the question of personal identity.”
Hogg attached a lengthy report, noting the veracity of Bruce’s witnesses had not been questioned; he did not have a knife or pistol; he did not chew tobacco or have a beard. In addition, Hogg pointed out, another man had been arrested who fit that description, possessed the weapons and had no alibi.
The fact that Bruce had been “sitting quietly in the midst of a large crowd of white men” outside a Hillsboro feed store when arrested “convinces me that in his heart he felt secure as an innocent man.”
Hogg acknowledged Bruce’s innocence, but he did not pardon him. He commuted his death sentence to life in prison.
Bruce was jubilant when told his life had been spared. The “white folks say this neck ain’t going to be broke!” he shouted to fellow prisoners.
The Waxahachie jail echoed with cheers.
To keep public reaction to the news at a minimum, Bruce was transported to state prison in the dark of night. Hogg delayed making the decision public to give authorities time to move him uneventfully.
Though Bruce was elated to have escaped the gallows, his joy probably faded upon facing the reality of life in Texas’ harsh 19th century prison system.
COMING TUESDAY: Isaac Bruce pleads for freedom.
THEN AND NOW
Isaac Bruce’s attorneys worked on his behalf without pay until local black residents raised money for them. Now, an inmate on death row would have paid, court-appointed counsel on appeal. An attorney would have months to file each round of appeals. Then, Bruce appealed to the trial court for a new trial and to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Today, all cases in which a death sentence is handed down are also automatically reviewed by federal courts.
Bruce’s supporters and his letters caught the attention of the Texas governor, who had sole responsibility for clemency. Today, the governor cannot grant a commutation without a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, created at Gov. James Hogg’s urging in 1893. Clemency is rare.
Bruce’s case, from trial to appeal, cost less than $67 (or about $1,600 in today’s dollars), according to the expense list submitted by Hill County. Capital cases today are hugely expensive and so slow that many wonder whether justice is served by leaving inmates languishing in prison for years. The cost of investigation, trial, appeals and incarceration can be several million dollars. Bruce was arrested, indicted, tried, sentenced and his appeals exhausted in 11 months. Today the average time on death row in Texas is almost 11 years.
While awaiting execution, Bruce was held in county jails with other prisoners, being moved to the death cell only a few weeks before scheduled execution. The condemned today immediately go to state prison while awaiting execution.
The cells where inmates are held now are a few feet larger than Bruce’s, but convicts are kept in isolation. They live in single cells with a tiny window in the wall and another in a solid steel door. They eat in their cells and are released only for a shower or recreation in another cage, by themselves, for a few hours a week.
In the 19th century, executions were handled by counties. But in 1923 the state of Texas assumed control. On execution day, the inmate has a last meal, but no smokes or alcohol. He dies in his white prison uniform.
Texas switched from hanging to electrocution before adopting lethal injection as the preferred method in 1977. Unlike the public spectacles of Bruce’s day, contemporary executions are clinical events, taking place on a gurney in a prison room in front of a handful of witnesses, including the media and friends and family of the victim and the condemned.
The debate over the humaneness of capital punishment lingers. Then, people worried about how cleanly the hanging could be carried out to result in a quick death. Today the question centers on how quickly and painlessly lethal drugs are administered and take effect.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Reporter Diane Jennings became curious about Isaac Bruce’s story while researching a contemporary death penalty issue in newspaper archives. With the help of the Texas State Library, the Sims Library in Waxahachie, the Texas Prison Museum and genealogist Patricia Kemper of Family Detectives, Jennings and reporter Selwyn Crawford pieced together Isaac Bruce’s tale through old newspaper accounts, crumbling court filings, scrawled letters and other century-old documents.
Bruce’s prison record was located, and a librarian at the state library found the original documents from Bruce’s trial and its aftermath rolled up in the bottom of a box in a warehouse. Researchers at the library dehumidified them, unrolled them and sent copies to the newspaper. Kemper identified Bruce and his descendants through census records, death certificates, and marriage and birth records. News researcher Darlean Spangenberger tracked them down. Photo editor Michael Hamtil unearthed archival images of some of the people and places connected to Bruce’s life and coordinated visual and multimedia presentation for these stories.