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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Joe Arridy: Another reason to get rid of the death penalty.

 



Joe Arridy: Another reason to get rid of the death penalty.

Joe Arridy was born in 1915 in Pueblo, Colorado, to illiterate Syrian parents who did not speak English. Arridy was slow to develop, and when he did speak, he couldn’t speak in complete sentences. The idiot local elementary school principal told his parents to keep him at home. The child was eventually placed, at the age of 10, into the State Home and Training School for Mental Defectives in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he lived on and off until becoming a young adult. Both in his neighborhood and at the school, he was often mistreated and beaten by his peers. He left the school and hopped on freight railcars to leave the city, ending up at the age of 21 in the railyards of Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1936.

On August 26, 1936, Arridy was arrested for vagrancy after being caught wandering around the railyards. At the time, the county sheriff, George Carroll, was searching for suspects in what was called the Drain murder case in Pueblo Colorado, where Joe Arridy had suddenly leaped on a train.

The Drain attack was a horrific crime. On August 14, 1936, two girls of the Drain family were attacked while sleeping at home in Pueblo. Both 15-year-old Dorothy and her 12-year-old sister Barbara Drain were bludgeoned with what was believed to be a hatchet. Dorothy was also raped; she died from the hatchet attack, while Barbara survived but barely.

When Joe Arridy told a cop that he had left from Pueblo the day after the Drain attack, he was pulled out of his cell for extensive questioning about the rape/murder.   Sheriff Carroll said that Arridy immediately confessed to the crime. Yet, when Carroll contacted the Pueblo police chief Arthur Grady about Arridy, he learned that they had already arrested a man considered the prime suspect: Frank Aguilar, a laborer from Mexico. Aguilar had worked for the father of the Drain girls and been fired shortly before the attack. An ax head was recovered from Aguilar's home.

 But Sheriff Carroll claimed that Arridy told him several times he had "been with a man named Frank" at the crime scene.(That statement appears to be false, in other words, a lie by Carroll, but at this point, it can’t be proven.)

However, Aguilar….who barely spoke English…. later confessed to the crime and told police he had never seen or met Arridy, whose first language was Syrian.  Furthermore, there was no physical evidence against him. Barbara Drain had testified that Aguilar had been present at the attack, but not Arridy. She could identify Aguilar because he had worked for her father. Regardless, Arridy was transported to Pueblo and confessed again. But it’s important to know that studies since that time have shown that persons of limited mental capacity are more vulnerable to coercion during interrogation and have a higher frequency of making false confessions.

When the case was finally taken to trial, Arridy's lawyer pled insanity to spare his client's life. Arridy was ruled to be sane, while acknowledged by three state psychiatrists to be so mentally limited as to be classified as an "imbecile", a medical term at the time. They said he had an IQ of 46, and the mind of a six-year-old and that he was "incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and therefore, would be unable to perform any action with a criminal intent".

It didn’t matter. Joe Arridy was convicted based on his false confession. Aguilar was also convicted of the rape and murder of Dorothy Drain and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1937 and went to his death, denying Arridy was involved in the case.

Joe Arridy was sentenced to death as well. Attorney Gail L. Ireland, later the Colorado Attorney General, took on Arridy’s case as defense counsel, Pro Bono, after his conviction and sentencing.

While Ireland won delays of Arridy's execution, he was unable to get his conviction overturned or commutation of his sentence. Ireland also petitioned the Supreme Court of Colorado, writing, "Believe me when I say that if he is gassed, it will take a long time for the state of Colorado to live down the disgrace". The Court denied the petition by a single vote.

While held on death row during the appeals process, Arridy played with a toy train, given to him by prison warden Roy Best. The warden said that Arridy was "the happiest prisoner on death row".  And that he was liked and treated well by both the prisoners and guards alike.

Although Ireland gained nine stays of his execution, Arridy was finally ordered to be executed in late 1939.

He ordered ice cream for his last meal.

Warden Best said, "He probably didn't even know he was about to die, all he did was happily sit and play with a toy train I had given him" and that when Best questioned Joe about his impending execution, he showed "blank bewilderment".

When Best told him that he was about to die in the gas chamber, Joe replied to him with a broad smile "No, no, Joe won't die." Inside the chamber, he became nervous and Best held his hand and reassured him.

Not one member of Joe’s family came to witness the execution.

Almost 70 years after Joe Arridy’s execution, a group, called Friends of Joe Arridy, came to the attention of Attorney David A. Martinez, who prepared a 400-page petition for a pardon from Governor Bill Ritter. Terri Bradt, the granddaughter of Attorney Gail L. Ireland, also became involved in the pardon issue.

In 2011 Joe Arridy received a full and unconditional posthumous pardon by Governor Bill Ritter. In June 2007, there was a dedication of a tombstone commissioned by the supporters to grant Joe a full pardon,  for his grave at a Cemetery near the state prison. (Prisoner are buried without markers)

Joe Arridy's death, the US Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to apply the death penalty to convicted persons who are mentally disabled.