Page:Special message of the governor of Iowa to the seventeenth General assembly, communicating report of pardons and remissions (IA specialmessageof00iowa).pdf/6

4 in wait, but in a contest in which Woolson was the quicker and more fortunate.

June 13, 1876. Committed to the Additional Penitentiary, January 22, 1875, for three years, for grand larceny in Johnson county. The reasons for his pardon are: 1st, youth; 2d, in my opinion he has been sufficiently punished; 3d, his conduct has been exemplary; 4th, his mother is a widow with a large family and needs his help; and, 5th, his pardon is strongly recommended by the warden and the teacher at the penitentiary.

July 3. Committed June 19, 1875, for six years, for rape in Boone county. The immediate reason for this pardon was a statement by the surgeon of the prison that it was necessary in order to save Laub’s life. There were also affidavits, by two others who were convicted with him, to his entire innocence.

July 4. Committed to the Penitentiary of the State October 25, 1872, for five years, for assault with intent to kill, in the county of Winneshiek. Her husband, who had been sentenced at the same time for the same offense to three years in the Penitentiary, had served out his sentence, and had been discharged. The prisoner’s mind had become affected, and there was danger of permanent loss of her reason. Her sentence would have expired in February, 1877, with full diminution. There were five young children needing her care. Hon. Chas. T. Granger, now circuit judge of the judicial district, was district-attorney at the time of the conviction, and prosecuted the prisoner. He recommended pardon. The present district-attorney approved her pardon. The petition for her pardon is signed by a large number of citizens in the neighborhood. In this case, and that of Mary Stickley, I had some doubts of the correctness of my action. It may be that my sympathy for these poor women and their families, and my desire to make some hearts glad on Centennial day, got the better of my judgment.

July 4. Committed to the penitentiary October 23, 1875, for instigating an assault with intent to kill, in the county of Black Hawk, for the term of nine years. This case was very difficult. Petitions were presented urging the pardon signed by some three or four hundred persons (both men and women) residing in the neighborhood, many of them declaring their conviction of the prisoner’s entire innocence of the crime of which she was convicted, and stating the urgent necessity of her pardon that she might care for her young children, whose father is dead. A remonstrance was presented from the