To James Madison from George Adams and Randall Tarrier, [ca. 18 July 1816]
From George Adams and Randall Tarrier
[ca. 18 July 1816]
The Petition of George Adams and Randall Tarrier, humbly sheweth, That your Petitioners are now lying in the jail of Washington County in the District of Columbia under sentence of death upon conviction of the crime of Highway Robbery. Of this crime your Petitioners solemnly declare that they are innocent: but confess, that they are guilty of having defrauded the person on whose testimony they were convicted of a watch and […] recommendations by the Court & Jury of a mitigation of their punishment by way of condition of pardon1—and pray most earnestly that they may be delivered from the hands of the executioner upon such conditions as may seem just. But if the President can not annex conditions to a pardon, they rely upon his mercy that he will not allow them to suffer for an offence comparatively light the highest penalty than man can enforce upon his fellow. And your Petitioners will &c.
George Adams
Randall Tarrier
RC and enclosure (DNA: RG 59, Petitions for Pardon, no. 336). Undated; conjectural date assigned based on the enclosed judges’ statement (see note 1 below). The verso of the petition bears the endorsement of nine jurors who recommended a mitigation of the punishment for Adams and Tarrier. RC damaged along fold.
1. On 18 July 1816 judges William Cranch and Buckner Thruston drafted a statement to the effect that the fact of highway robbery was “fully proved; that there was no circumstance of mitigation, unless it be, that the party robbed was not put into great terror, nor much injured in his person, although knock’d down.” The judges conceded that “there was evidence of the general good character of both prisoners, who are men of colour & had been employed as waiters by genteel people,” adding that this “seems to have been their first atrocious offence.” Randall Tarrier was described as “the leader, and if the President should think proper to discriminate between the prisoners,” the judges recommended the case of George Adams “to his particular attention.” With regard to Tarrier, they concluded, “if the alternative be death or impunity, we must leave his case entirely with the Present. But if a milder adequate punishment can be substituted for death, We recommend him to the mercy of the Executive.”