Sierra County CA Archives History - Books .....Execution Of Michael Murray 1882
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Book Title: Illustrated History Of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties


EXECUTION OF MICHAEL MURRAY.

   The last legal execution of Sierra county occurred two years after the
execution of Harlow. On the twenty-seventh of December, 1857, Poker flat
witnessed an affray on her streets that caused the immediate death of one man
and the hanging of another. The fight arose between Michael Murray and Daniel
Sweeney, but was participated in by R. Galloway. Sweeney received a knife wound
on the face, supposed to have been inflicted by Galloway. Then a knife, in the
hand of Murray, penetrated his heart, producing instantaneous dissolution. The
parties were examined before Justice F. Descombes; Murray was held for murder in
the second degree, and Galloway as accessory. Murray had received four wounds in
his fight with Sweeney, and it was some time before he was able to appear in
court. His case was begun in the court of sessions in May, 1858, but was
transferred to the district court, and came up in July, before Judge Niles
Searles. Harry I. Thornton, Jr., then district attorney, prosecuted the case on
the part of the people; while R. H. Taylor and J. J. Musser labored for the
acquittal of the prisoner. The case was submitted to the jury at seven o'clock
P. M., July 15, and at eleven that evening a verdict of murder in the first
degree was rendered, Joseph Pearson being foreman. July 24, 1858, Judge Searles
sentenced the prisoner to be hung by the neck until dead, on the seventeenth of
September, 1858. Murray's counsel appealed the case to the supreme court, where
the action of the lower court was sustained. The slow deliberations of that body
enabled Murray to obtain a respite, during which the utmost efforts were made to
save him. The homicide for which he was doomed to suffer having occurred in a
general fight, with no proof of cold-blooded villainy against Murray, he having
been attacked and severely wounded himself, the popular feeling and sympathy
were considerably in his favor. But they were inefficacious in wresting him from
the hands of the law.

   Judge Warren T. Sexton of Butte county, who occupied the bench in Sierra
county at the December term of the district court, pronounced the second
sentence of death on the twenty-sixth of the month, setting the execution for
the twenty-first of January, 1859. The execution was conducted by Sheriff Edward
Irwin, and his deputies Ould and Pierce, within an inclosure in the court-hourse
square. The prisoner was attended by Father Delahunty, of the Downieville
Catholic church, who continued in prayer until the fatal moment arrived. Murray
declined to address the small crowd who were admitted to the scene. With great
calmness he met his doom. The prisoner was elevated by a three-hundred-pound
weight let off by a trip-hook, which apparatus is now preserved in the
court-house, waiting for another victim. The inclosure was guarded by the
National Guard, who refused to admit the three hundred spectators that came to
witness the affair not knowing it would be private. The body hung nineteen
minutes before it was lowered. Murray was a very large man with great physical
strength.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties

San Francisco: Fariss & Smith
(1882)

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/sierra/history/1882/illustra/executio309ms.txt

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