The Killing of John Sharpless: The Pursuit of Justice in Delaware County

[00:00:03.350] - Benjamin

Well, welcome back, Stephanie. And thank you again for taking time to share the story of John Sharplus and Samuel Johnson with us.

[00:00:12.270] - Stephanie

Thank you. I'm very much enjoying the conversation.

[00:00:17.130] - Benjamin

Where we left off was Johnson had been taken into custody and the initial hearing, what we would today call the arraignment. It was a farce, wasn't it? There was almost nothing learned about the events of that night in any factual way. There were baseless accusations flying back and forth in front of the Magistrate judge, conflicting testimonies witnesses who were clearly biased towards one predetermined outcome, which is make sure this black man pays right. Yeah. There's about the only really interesting thing or potentially usable lead that comes out of this initial hearing is the notion of a possible accomplice, a man named Alexander Pritchett, who Johnson had met while he was in prison some years earlier. The printed situation, I know that testified that Johnson had been involved in a previous violent event. According to Pritchett, Johnson had killed a man by smacking him over the head and then took money out of his wallet. And Pritchet's point was that Samuel Johnson supposedly had a history of this sort of violent behavior. But Johnson vehemently said no such thing ever happened. And this was during the Magistrate trial. Nonetheless, the Magistrate found that Johnson would be held over for trial in Dolphin County for the murder of John Sharply.

All that really was presented against Samuel Johnson. And the Magistrate hearing was, as you said, hearsay. The spurned woman, the guy who supposedly heard a jailhouse story of Johnson's confession of another murder. I mean, it was all very simplistic, and he said, she said. But nonetheless, the Magistrate found it sufficient to bind Johnson over for trials. Now, when Johnson got to Delaware County, he sat in jail for, as I recall, well over a year before his actual murder trial even started. He sat in the Delaware County Prison. Delaware County Jail, I should say. And he was found attorneys by a friend of the Charlottes, coincidentally, a man who was very much appalled by the racist undertones and the activities of police and the society as a whole at the time and found Johnson's defense attorneys.

I know it's overused in this day and age, but they were sort of the dream team of the day. They were both white, wealthy, educated men. And the irony of that is that the defense attorneys for Samuel Johnson really had far more in common with the murder victim than they had with the man that they were defending. But nonetheless, they were very committed to defending Johnson and trying to prove that it just wasn't feasible that he was the man that did this. There were no witnesses. The widow didn't recognize him. There was really no case against him.

[00:06:33.150] - Benjamin

In a sense, they were arguing that it's what we call the Saudi defense. Right. Some other dude did it. Right. Obviously, it was not an accidental death. The evidence of the crime scene confirmed that he had been struck from behind by an instrument. It wasn't the horse's hoof, right?

[00:06:56.370] - Stephanie

Yeah.

[00:06:57.350] - Benjamin

That got him. But there was no way that you could actually tie Johnson to this particular place at this particular time. It just could not be done. That was the defenses argument, wasn't it?

[00:07:11.730] - Stephanie

Well, yes, and it was absolutely true. I mean, it wasn't even something that they had to manufacture. There simply was no witness that came forward and placed Samuel Johnson anywhere near the Sharplist farm the night of the murder.

f they had the truth on their side, right? The person that was not on their side was Judge Clayton. And in your entire account of this particular trial, Judge Clayton stood out to me as somebody who he was presiding over the trial, but he was certainly not presiding over the search for truth and justice. He had his own opinions that he came into the courtroom with and he ran the courtroom the way that he wanted to. And it did not look anything like a fair and impartial trial in your account, largely thanks to this kind of imperious individual who basically thought he made the rules?

[00:09:09.810] - Stephanie

Well, he did. And even in closing arguments, he spent I believe it was well over an hour simply parroting the prosecution's case. He never encouraged the jury to look at the defensive side of things. He never encouraged the jury to look at the simple facts of the lack of evidence, lack of witnesses. He was a guy who was on a career trajectory. He had a certain philosophy. He was not an unbiased judge. He was a very wealthy man. How he'd accumulated his money is up for question. But there were times where certain legal actions were delayed because Judge Clayton was touring Europe. I mean, the goal of getting Samuel Johnson a fair trial and charging the jury with the proper legal instruction to offer a fair verdict, that was not Judge Clayton's priority.

[00:10:21.210] - Benjamin

It really struck me, your account of this remarkable encounter between the widow, Sharplus and Johnson, when the widow is brought up onto the stand and Johnson is brought before her, and despite the fact that Johnson has actually been sort of given new clothes and has gained some weight in prison, and he sort of looks a little better than he did before he went into prison owing to those factors, she does not positively identify him. She looks at him and she says, I can't say for certain that this was the man that was in my house before the entire courtroom.

[00:11:06.190] - Stephanie

No. And it was funny because the prosecutors put on this sort of theatrical display of flourishing a coat that Samuel Johnson supposedly wore during this crime and really thought that he was going to present to Susan this indelible image that would bring back her memory, that this was indeed Samuel Johnson, like out of the blue after all this time, she was going to say, oh, yeah, you're right. I changed my mind. Now it was him, but she never did. She absolutely on the stand. And as I mentioned previously, to the end of her life, she never, ever agreed with anyone who said that it was Samuel Johnson.

[00:11:52.410] - Benjamin

And that's interesting because that stand that she took, the figurative stand that she took actually did affect the deliberation process by the jury. You write that even though in the very first go round of you've got twelve jurors, and for this to be murder in the first, they have to be unanimous, et cetera, you had some holdouts and you had a couple of men on that particular jury who at first were not certain. And what exactly happened in the jury room?

[00:12:35.730] - Stephanie

Yeah, they took several votes and could not come to any sort of unanimous decision. The judge ordered them to remain in the courthouse. I think as I recall, the judge placed cops up in, like the attic area of the courthouse. He wouldn't let the jurors leave. Not only were they not allowed to leave, they were actually provided bedding. They brought costs in and made them sleep there. But the jury took several boats could not come to a unanimous decision. Judge Clayton was a bit confused by this. He thought that he had sufficiently given a charge that explained to the jury what verdict he expected them to find. When the deliberations continued to the next day and there was still no verdict, the judge was confused. The prosecution was confused. But finally they did. After a great deal of debate amongst themselves, they did come up with a guilty verdict.

[00:13:47.990] - Benjamin

You have in your book the photograph from the newspaper of the day announcing the verdict, which was, of course, hotly anticipated. This was one of the biggest murder trials that the state had ever seen. I believe there is somebody on record. I forget who it might have been, the judge who actually had told the jury that this is the most important case that Pennsylvania had ever tried and so forth.

[00:14:16.150] - Stephanie

Yeah.

[00:14:18.230] - Benjamin

I don't know whether you're allowed to say that anymore. Frankly, I'm not an expert, but it makes me wonder.

[00:14:28.530] - Stephanie

You're probably definitely not allowed to say that. And as much sympathy one has for the murder victim and his family, I'm really not necessarily sure that it was the most important or largest case in Pennsylvania. It certainly was a notorious case, but he really was placing an onus on the jury here again, the message was clear. There was a verdict that he wanted, and he was going to convince the jury one way or another that they were going to present it to him.

[00:15:07.230] - Benjamin

And you're right that throughout most of this time, Johnson is fairly dispassive in the courtroom. I mean, he's quiet, he's reserved. He's not lashing out. He's not sort of yelling when something doesn't go his way. He just sort of sits there and is kind of quietly watching this whole time.

[00:15:33.160] - Stephanie

Yeah. And you know what part of me wonders if he fully understood the magnitude of what was happening to him. Perhaps that's why he was quiet another part. And this is really even more sad almost is that based on his own life history? I think, unfortunately, in his mind that maybe he always thought that he was going to be tossed into prison for one thing or another, because it's pretty much what had happened to him for the past, how many years.

[00:16:15.250] - Benjamin

And the frustration of sitting there, as the prosecution is able to say, for the most part, it had to be him. Why did it have to be him? Well, just listen to us. Because it had to be him in the absence of any evidence.

[00:16:28.210] - Stephanie

Yes, that's correct.

[00:16:31.030] - Benjamin

I don't know how you live with that. So after the verdict, you have kind of an interesting couple wrinkles which emerge. And this actually recalled one of our previous cases that we looked at, which was Frank Dupree in Atlanta in 1921, which is that immediately after Frank Dupree is convicted of killing a security guard and a botched robbery, you have these kind of appeals swing into play. Right. And you have these petitions which sort of begin to Marshal in Johnson's defense after his conviction. And I want to bring in one of the through lines in your book here, which we haven't talked a lot about, but which is actually fairly important to understanding the kind of culture of the time, the identity of the residents of the area at the time, which is that you had the Quaker community, which was a kind of very early champion for what we would now call human rights and for the concern for the poor and for justice within the legal system. The Quakers are taking strong stands on a bunch of different issues. And sharply as an elder in the Quaker Church, had actually been involved in one of the main committees which addressed issues that affected the lives of the poor and so forth.

And so you're right that in the period after Johnson's conviction suddenly swarming his case are hundreds and then thousands of people who are advocating for reprieves, who are advocating for commutations. So how did that take shape, and what impacts did it have?

[00:18:26.770] - Stephanie

Well, first of all, I think the one thing that people realize throughout the trial was that Samuel Johnson did not have the capacity to defend himself as perhaps someone of a higher intellectual capacity could have done. So there are really rotten people in the world, and there are a whole lot of good people in the world also that saw that and said there is an inherent unfairness to this. You've got a man that really had no means of communicating forcefully in his own defense, and he was sort of railroaded into this. So that started. And then when the appeals process started, some sort of rumors started coming out that maybe there were other people that were involved. And then, of course, the public picked up on that. And as you say, little by little, there was this growing sense that something about this case wasn't right. Eventually, the one petition had 5000 signatures to pardon Samuel Johnson. And when you realize, I think that Delaware County at the time only had 75,000 residents, 5000 signatures, it doesn't sound like much, but it really was substantial.

[00:19:57.990]

Yeah.

[00:19:58.340] - Stephanie

And then you started getting into more well known people that were coming forward. The John wanna makers of the world, former governors were coming forward, senators were coming forward, women, which today we would call socialites, their husbands were wealthy and well known. They started coming forward. And as it tends to do, thankfully, the more people that are discussing it, the more well known those people are, the more other folks just want to know what's this case all about, what's going on with this guy? How did he end up in jail?

[00:20:39.990] - Benjamin

Do not ever underestimate the power of a well organized ladies aid society. Right.

[00:20:46.150] - Stephanie

You got that right. You got that right.

[00:20:51.790] - Benjamin

So then as these petitions are taking shape, he is sentenced to hang. He was convicted of murder in the first, right?

[00:21:01.360] - Stephanie

Yeah.

[00:21:03.130] - Benjamin

And yet, unlike Frank Dupree, who we looked at last time, Frank gets sort of extension after extension, but he never actually gets his sentence commuted. Johnson, who really is kind of just waiting to see how all of this is unfolding, he actually wins the commutation. So what was the lever there? What was the switch that flipped?

[00:21:37.010] - Stephanie

Well, here's the interesting thing about this. He had prepared himself to go to the gallows three times. He was told, have your last meal, prepare yourself. And then at the last moment, I was told that, Nope, Nope. It's being postponed again. What happened finally was there were a number of other suspects who came to the forefront during these attempts to get Johnson out of jail to overthrow his verdict. Some of the theories were far more possible than others. It was known that there was a group of robbers operating in Delaware County. So the one theory was it was just these guys who'd been robbing without a hitch, and maybe John Sharplus fought them, and that's how he was killed. Another theory even presented in the New York Times was that a man named William Caldwell was actually the killer, and that was primarily based on the fact that he had these big protruding teeth and had a prison record. There was a group called the Fernwood Gang that was committing various crimes, but the one group that was most suspected of the robbery was a gang out of Philadelphia led by two guys named Wilson and Chops.

It was to the point where there was sufficient evidence that a grand jury was actually called to determine whether Wilson and or Chopaz were going to be tried for the killing of John Sharplus. Meanwhile, Samuel Johnson sitting in jail, which is odd in and of itself. Nonetheless, during this trial, one of the guys, Chop, has said, yes, it was us. We did it. I was there. Wilson's the one that actually killed Sharplus. So you're thinking, well, surely Samuel Johnson is going to be released from prison now. No. And unfortunately, because of a technicality, it was ruled that the grand jury was called illegally. Neither Chopas nor Wilson were ever tried for sharply's murder. Meanwhile, Samuel Johnson is still sitting in prison. Now, the one thing that happened in Johnson's favor was a man by the name of James Beaver was elected governor of Pennsylvania, and he had seen action in Civil War. And he had been in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. And it gave him a real sensitivity towards the value of human life. And one of the first things he did when he took office was to help get Johnson's death sentence commuted to a life sentence, which still, when you think about that, it's lunacy when you realize that the courts very nearly came close to prosecuting two other men for the murder, and yet Samuel Johnson still sat in prison.

It seems really unbelievable, but it's exactly what happened.

[00:25:16.010] - Benjamin

There's a passage in your book that I would love for you to read to us because I think it very definitely sums up everything that you have just been describing. It's on page 101. And as I read it, I just thought, you know, anybody with a rational mind looking at this particular situation must have come to a different conclusion. And yet they didn't. Right. And so the injustice of that just really lingers even today. It's that paragraph on 101 that starts as others profited from Johnson's conviction. Would you just read that whole paragraph to us?

[00:25:59.570] - Stephanie

Sure. As others profited from Johnson's conviction, public sentiment against it grew stronger. Very little felt right about the arrest and trial of Samuel Johnson, not the questionable ethics of the police, not the hunger of the press for exclusive stories with salacious headlines, not the testimony of convicted criminals and greedy acquaintances. Even the efforts of Johnson's defense attorneys seemed insufficient when the hanging of a man was a very real and likely outcome of the case. And on top of all of this, anyone who could read a newspaper knew that two other men, Christopher Chopas and Charlie Wilson, had also been indicted for the murder, and only by means of a legal technicality avoided conviction. It was time for Pennsylvania's Board of Pardons to offer Johnson a chance at freedom or publicly present to the community at large its reasons for failing to do so.

[00:27:05.190] - Benjamin

What was it like writing that when you could see the whole case from a bird's eye view where you just furious when you were sort of putting that on paper?

[00:27:19.230] - Stephanie

It'S almost like the seven stages, or whatever the stages. I mean, I went through such a transition of emotions back and forth, back and forth. First was disbelief how in the world this man was even convicted to begin with, then horror at the police officers that were allowed to utilize such racist tactics. And then you go through a point where you see the Quaker community, and here again, John Sharply was one of the loudest voices of the Quaker community. But you see them fighting for the life of a man who was accused of killing one of their own. And then you get to the sympathy for Susan and then utter respect for the strength that she mustered to not be bullied into fingering an innocent man. And then, yes, the pardon process. How crazy is it that a man is still sitting in jail when two other men are very likely responsible for the crime? So the gamut of emotions it's wide and varied, but most of all, you're just hoping against hope that there's going to be some sort of a happy ending for this man.

[00:28:49.310] - Benjamin

Well, as you write, Johnson, his sentence is commuted from execution to life in prison, and he actually ends up living a very quiet life for the next ten years. Tell us what happened to him after that. It's not a victory in the sense that he was freed, but at least he was spared the gallows.

[00:29:26.850] - Stephanie

Well, I guess one of the sort of ironic things about it is that Johnson was a model prisoner, and he was in Eastern State Penitentiary, which is a notorious prison, very rigid guidelines for separation of prisoners one from the other. Now very little interaction with other human beings. But there was something about Johnson that he was comfortable in a very regimented setting. He was known by the warden as a passive man, jovial man never created any issues while he was in prison. He shouldn't have been there. I think that that was well recognized by everybody. Nonetheless, he was on January 1 of 1900, after he had been in prison for ten years, six months and nine days, to be exact, the guard was making his rounds and passed by Johnson cell and saw that he was still laying in his car. And he told Johnson that breakfast was coming, you know, wake up or whatever conversation the guard would have had with a prisoner at that moment. The guard continued his rounds, came back a second time and noticed that Johnson was still in the exact same position. It was then that they entered the cell and realized that he had passed away in his sleep.

So even though his, quote unquote death sentence was commuted to life in prison, he still died in prison, probably an innocent man.

[00:31:23.770] - Benjamin

We are still very much in the middle of Black History Month, and we are looking at cases in which race played a role or in which racial injustices were revealed in some way. Stephanie, what impact did the you call it the John Sharplus case, but I think we probably both agree it's the John Sharply and Samuel Johnson case. What impact did this case have on race relations in the Philadelphia era in those last years of the 19th century or as the 19th century became the 20th century, were there any reforms which were brought into effect? Was there a greater awareness of the fact that this man was tried and convicted largely because the police needed an escape goat and he was black and that was enough for them?

[00:32:27.170] - Stephanie

Well, one of the most significant things that occurred was there was an election for Mayor, and one of the candidates was well known to be quite corrupt and also had racist tendencies. And during that election, at parades and gatherings, people in the crowds would literally yell Samuel Johnson's name, remember Samuel Johnson as a means of educating those around them who may not have heard of the case to the fact that you elect another corrupt Mayor, we're going to continue to have police officers who are going to view any black man as an easy target anytime they needed to close out a case. So the use of Samuel Johnson's name actually caused an upset. The corrupt Mayor, who, by all accounts, as we would say today, was well ahead in the polls and should have been an easy shoe in for the office, actually lost his leg. And it was in great part due to the fact that people did remember Samuel Johnson, they did remember the injustice of his case. And while it may not have helped him during his lifetime, it did have an impact on the political climate in Philadelphia, at least for that time period.

[00:34:06.110] - Benjamin

It's really remarkable. I mean, what a direct Echo we have today of, say, the George Floyd protests, where one of the rallying cries was say his name, right?

[00:34:16.630] - Stephanie

Yes, exactly. Absolutely. It is horrifying that we are still in the midst of these same sort of battles, and there is no easy resolution to the problems of race in this country, obviously. And I was never bold enough or dumb enough to think that a book that I would write would make a significant impact on those problems. But the one thing that I'm happy that I did, that I'm glad that I did was I feel like I at least generated a part of the conversation. This is a historic problem, as evidenced by Samuel Johnson, as evidenced by this book, The Killing of John Sharply. So at least I could do that small part of the work of perhaps coming to some resolution with the problems we face. But I think it's really important for people to read books like The Killing of John Charlottes, because there are some folks, I think that don't understand or maybe try to ignore the fact that this is an issue that's not new. It hasn't been created by the media. It hasn't been created by any political party. It hasn't been created by any political philosophy. It's a problem that America has been grappling with since our inception, and we have to understand the root of it to get to the solution, at least in my opinion.

And that's why I thought it was a case that needed to be written about it. If I could say one more thing about Samuel Johnson, that sure, this may be somewhat morbid, depending on how some folks feel about it, but when Samuel Johnson died in prison, after all of the indignities that he had already suffered in life, there was no one to collect his body. The practice at that time in that case was to donate the body to what was called the anatomical board, and that is the part of the practice of educating medical students, obviously, is to use human bodies. And as I say, it may sound morbid to some, but it is not to me because I believe that what he could not have done in life, which was perhaps contribute as much as he would have wanted to, he really did contribute at the end of his life to medical students, to knowledge, to science and the bodies that are donated to the anatomical board, they are treated, they are revered. They are treated with great respect. So what he did not find in his life, I do believe that kind of makes me a little emotional.

I do believe that he was able to contribute in death in some manner.

[00:37:47.070] - Benjamin

No, thank you for mentioning that, because it is a small consolation. But it is a consolation. Right. And that does absolutely provide the dignity that he should have received in the last 15 years of his life that he finally did receive. So really appreciate your offering that to us. Now, regarding your concern about the continuing injustice. Look, as I was reading your book, I was struck as a native Mississippian that this did not happen in the Jim Crow South. Right. And this is an American problem. That is still an American problem. And it doesn't take a lot of historical imagination to reckon with the fact that Johnson's outcome would have been very different if he had been a poor white man as opposed to a poor black man. And it doesn't ask a lot of the reader to consider that. Let me ask you this, though. No, I do want to ask you one of the again, similarities with the Frank Dupree case that we were looking at last time is that in Frank's situation, it was 40 years later, it was in Atlanta. And I recognized that 1920s Atlanta is not 1880s Philadelphia. Sure. Of course.

And yet there are civil discussions that emerge in high profile cases like this that transcend state lines, that transcend Mason Dixon lines. Right. And one of this is about capital punishment. Frank's case really brought to light the practice of executing prisoners by the state of Georgia in a way that renewed certain calls for its abolition. Right. That would take some time. But Frank's case was one in which he his death on the gallows did provide a piece of the story about how much longer are we going to continue this particular practice? What impact did Johnson's case have, if any, on the discourse surrounding capital punishment in Pennsylvania?

[00:40:16.470] - Stephanie

Unfortunately, it didn't change the fact that we have capital punishment in Pennsylvania anytime a case like this occurs, it does sort of open the floodgates to newspaper editorials and public speeches and groups getting involved in trying to abolish the death penalty. There was a case later in the 1930s in Pennsylvania where a woman was convicted of murder and she was the first woman to face the electric chair that like Samuel Johnson's case in the 1880s, should we still hang prisoners? Should we have a death penalty at all? The 1930s case questions, how humane, how justifiable the death penalty was. Both cases raised questions. Neither case changed it. The only thing that happened in the latter case in the 1930s was shortly there after the state decided, well, electrocution is not really all that humane. Let's just go with lethal injection. So, yes, it raises questions and there are strong feelings on both sides, but the death penalty still exists in America.

[00:41:44.110] - Benjamin

This is a trying story, Stephanie. It is full of sorrow and struggle and anger and everything that the record of injustice breeds. But we do have to hear it and we cannot turn our eyes away. This is part of the American experiment as its failures. Right. So I want to thank you for bringing that to us and for helping us to see with clearer eyes just how much work there is left to do. I have one bonus question, so to speak, for you, which is one of these other through lines that exists in your account of Sharplus and Johnson. Stephanie, you have been researching and writing about Pennsylvania history for quite a long time. You've got a number of books under your belt, and I just have to ask prisons. You spend a lot of time talking about prisons. You've got Eastern State, Penn, you've got Moimensing. Tell me, where does your interest in the clink come from? Because it is just all throughout this particular book.

[00:42:55.750] - Stephanie

I am fascinated by. I'm not even sure it's so much prisons themselves, Ben, as much as I'm fascinated by the ways that we think that we can mold and change our fellow men, our fellow man and women. Eastern State, for instance. The intentions were horrific from the beginning. There was really a very clear intense that you could not see other human beings except for a few minutes each day. The prisoners even had their own little tiny recreation yards attached to their cells. Nobody cared if these horrific places were overrun. Eastern State was built with 450 cells originally. I think by the time Johnson was there, there were one 10 people. We think that taking human beings and placing them in the worst environment you could imagine is somehow going to deter them from learning criminal activity, deter them from committing criminal activity. In my view, from a historical perspective, all it does is create more anger and less hope. And I think that that is the worst condition a human being can experience, and that's the absence of hope and putting someone in a cell under horrific circumstances, treating them horribly, feeding them horribly, clothing them, not providing proper hygiene or whatever the circumstances were in the prisons in Samuel Johnson's day and some still say exist today.

I am fascinated by the fact that we somehow believe that that is what's going to solve our crime problem or make people suddenly perfect human beings. I don't know how much data has to be collected to illustrate that it really, in many cases doesn't work. I don't know why we keep trying it so it's not only the prisons themselves, the physically constructed buildings that men and women are warehoused in, it's the philosophy behind them. I'm just fascinated that we think we can force someone to be less violent by inflicting violence or that we can force them to be more caring by being less caring toward them. It is an answer that is admittedly well above my pay grade but I think here again, just spurring the questions, just encouraging conversation has got to at least be one of the steps along the way to finding a better way to do things.

[00:46:19.550] - Benjamin

Well, you've done us a great service by bringing these accounts to our attention and only these sort of careful and patient and sustained investigation of a researcher can do that. Sometimes it goes beyond sermonizing. It goes to showing us here is what happened and letting us take the ball and run with it from there. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. It has been a real privilege to have you.

[00:46:46.270] - Stephanie

Oh, thank you. I've really enjoyed it and I really appreciate being here with you, bill.