Waging one of his mock campaigns for President, comedian Pat Paulsen responded to a question whether he supported the death penalty by saying “No, Washington D.C. has suffered enough.”
The quip has some resonance especially these days. But the topic of capital punishment is no laughing matter, especially here in Minnesota, which commemorated early in February, the 120th anniversary of the last state-sponsored execution in Minnesota, which occurred on February 13, 1906, a botched hanging that precipitated the abolition of capital punishment five years later, 115 years ago this spring, on April 11, 1911.
Minnesota has remained off-limits to the death penalty, condemned by the late Jesse Jackson as a practice that “turns the state into a murderer.” Despite about 23 different proposals to re-introduce the death penalty through legislation since then, Minnesota remains one of 23 states, including all four adjacent ones along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that do not impose the ultimate sanction, a number that has grown slowly in recent years according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Capital Commencement
But that movement has not deterred other states, which have commenced the year with a fast start killing convicted murderers. Four have been executed so far this year, fittingly one in Texas, another in Oklahoma, and a pair in Florida, the three states that have been vying lately for the leadership in that undertaking, and a bevy of them are scheduled through this spring and thereafter, primarily in southern states.
The subjects of the executions are, as usual, poor and disproportionately Black men, although two of the count this year have been White, but Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) have so far this year bypassed women, although about 44 of them are among the 2,000 on Death Rows in the 27 states that permit capital punishment, comprising a little more than .02% of that condemned populace.
At the Federal level, there are no executions imminent as President Biden, in one of his last acts in office last year, used his autopen to commute the death sentences of 37 of 40 condemned prisoners, leaving three still subject to capital punishment by the Federal government if and when the Trump administration gets around to it, as the President has pledged it will.
Both Botchings
The demise of capital punishment in this state is traceable to a pair of incidents three decades apart, both botchings: an infamous bank robbery in Northfield 150 years ago, and a flawed hanging in downtown St. Paul 35 years later. That botching has been told before, but is worth recounting with the resumption of executions on the horizon. See Perspectives, “Prison closure conjures Cole and capital cases” in the June 2, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Lawyer.
The nexus to the abolition of capital punishment in Minnesota starts in Rice County, which occurred a century and a half ago. The notorious Jesse James gang, led by brothers Jesse and Frank, including three younger siblings, staged the celebrated “Northfield Raid,” an audacious daylight bank robbery on the main street of that prosperous college town on September 7, 1876, a date still commemorated annually by that community’s “Jesse James Days” and relived in multiple publications from dime novels to criminal treatises and several movies.
The James-Younger robbery miserably failed, foiled by alert citizens. Five died in the incident: a courageous young teller at the First National Bank who rebuffed threats to open the locked vault; a citizen bystander; and three James gang members. Jesse and his brother, Frank, managed to escape back to their stomping grounds in Missouri while the Younger trio made their way through deeply-wooded terrain to near Madelia, where they were treated as celebrities until captured by a large posse about 80 miles southwest of the robbery site, with seven wounds inflicted on the sibling’s leader, Cole.
Jesse continued in his life of crime until he was shot in the back and killed five years later at his Missouri farmstead by a confederate gang member planted there by law enforcement. Brother Frank went straight. The younger threesome went straight to jail, ultimately ending up in the Stillwater prison, which had opened for business in 1873 on the grounds of the prior Territorial edifice constructed 20 years earlier and receiving prisoners in 1854.
Capital Curtailment
That’s when the events leading to the curtailment of capital punishment began. The three Youngers almost certainly faced a death sentence for first-degree murder, although it wasn’t known for certain who actually pulled the fatal triggers. Cole, the oldest of the threesome, is believed to have been the one who shot and killed the Northfield bystander.
But all three pleaded guilty to murder. By doing so, they dodged the hangman’s noose because the law at that time reserved capital punishment to determination by juries. Their guilty pleas were reluctantly accepted by Judge Samuel Lord in Rice County District Court, who offered “no words of comfort” for the three brothers. They were then taken to the Stillwater prison to serve life terms imposed by the judge.
The outcome sparked an outcry with a bill passed by the state House of Representatives the following year to close that capital punishment loophole. But it died in the Senate until it was revived and enacted in 1883, six years after the Northfield Raid. By pleading guilty, the Younger trio avoided hanging, a fate that befell at least 70 Minnesotans, dating back to the first executions in territorial days, along with a handful of lynchings and the mass execution of 38 Dakota tribal members in 1862 after the Dakota uprising.
That 1883 change in the law regarding capital punishment lasted for more than two decades until repealed 23 years later when the state eliminated that sanction.
The Youngers saga also prompted a constitutional amendment in 1896 establishing a three-member Board of Pardons to issue clemency in lieu of the prior unilateral authority vested with the governor. Composed of the governor, attorney general, and chief justice of the state supreme court, the issuance of clemency was deemed in the absence of explicit statutory language to require unanimity in Shefa v. Ellison, 968 N.W.2d 818 (Minn. 2022). But a year later, the Legislature changed the law to a majority decision, along with other procedural changes, like creation of an advisory Clemency Review Board under Minn. Stat. § 638.01.
Meanwhile, resigned to their fates, the Youngers were exemplary inmates, credited with starting The Mirror newspaper in 1887, which still functions as the nation’s oldest continuous prison publication. Cole and Jim, the two surviving brothers after Bob died of tuberculosis while imprisoned, served out their terms and were paroled in 1901 after 25-year stints. Jim drifted into obscurity before committing suicide, but not Cole, who went on to a multifaceted business career, even teaming up for a while to run a Wild West carnival show like the more celebrated Buffalo Bill one, with none other than his old robbery colleague Frank James. Cole experienced a rarity for Wild West outlaws: He died of natural causes, a heart attack, in 1916 at age 72.
Legal Leave
It was not until a decade after the two surviving Youngers left their not-so-friendly confines at the turn of the 20th century in Washington County that capital punishment took its legal leave, too.
It had extended from territorial days to 1911, when a botched execution led to a constitutional controversy and ultimately the death penalty’s abolition in Minnesota. Nearly two decades after enactment of the Younger-based death penalty law, a sensational case resulting in execution of a woman for poisoning her husband led to legislation limiting capital punishment unless a jury specifically prescribed it.
The measure, which passed in 1868, effectively curtailed capital punishment until it was amended after the Younger brothers furor in 1883 to mandate capital punishment for first-degree murder cases unless “exceptional circumstances” justified a life sentence, which would be decided by trial judges rather than juries.
The controversy over public executions led to new legislation in 1889, known for its author, the “John Day Smith Law.” The law restricted public access to hangings, the only prescribed form of capital punishment, and prohibited newspaper reporters from attending executions or publishing any matters related to an execution “beyond the statement of the fact that such convict was on the day in question duly executed.”
Ramsey Ruckus
In 1906, William Williams, convicted of murdering a teenage boy, was to be hanged in the basement of the Ramsey County Courthouse. Because of a miscalculation in the length of the rope, the murderer was left dangling for nearly 15 minutes before he was declared dead.
Front-page newspaper stories about the ruckus, commenting on its brutality, caused public clamor, including a promise by then-Gov. John Johnson that he would “resign [his] office” rather than “aid in the execution of a condemned man.”
Meanwhile, three newspapers that published articles about the hanging were charged with violating the anti-publication provision of the John Day Smith statute. The newspapers challenged the measure, claiming that it violated both federal and state constitutional protection for freedom of the press, a proposition rejected by a Ramsey County District Court judge.
The Minnesota Supreme Court heard the matter on a certified issue and affirmed the lower court ruling in a 1907 case entitled State v. Pioneer Press. Rejecting claims under both the federal and state constitutions, the court held that the ban on reporting constituted a valid means to “avoid exciting and unwholesome effect on the public mind, while upholding ‘public morals.’” In so doing, it rejected the contention that the prohibition of publication was barred by the First Amendment, noting casually that the First Amendment did not apply to the states.
But back to the botched hanging. In 1911, during the height of the Progressive Era and with the woeful Williams denouement fresh in mind, the legislature abolished capital punishment, replacing it with life imprisonment for first degree murder under Minn. Stat. §609.185.
The twisted tale of capital punishment and its demise here in Minnesota is worth recalling as executions start to accelerate elsewhere in the nation.
Amazing history. The story of the Younger brothers, the anti-first-amendment John Day Smith law, and the story of William Williams (look up his crime and the details) … what an amazing rabbit hole of events. I’m glad Minnesota DOES NOT have the death penalty (it’s inhumane and undemocratic), but what a strange way the state got there.
One inaccuracy in your article, you state “Minnesota remains one of 23 states, including all four adjacent ones … that do not impose the ultimate sanction” . This is not correct as South Dakota retains the death penalty and used it as recently as 2019.