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.