Richard Smith (Execution of)

Richard Smith was hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on January 25, 1889, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas for a murder committed in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), a crime he denied to the end.

Thomas Pringle lived near Shawnee Town in Towson County in the Choctaw Nation. On March 28, 1888, he and a woman named Hattie Seals, who lived in his home, were in the woods cutting boards when a shot rang out and Pringle fell. Seals went for help, but he was mortally wounded and soon died.

After hearing of the shooting, Pringle’s brother Charles went to the scene and followed unusual boot prints from a tree about thirty yards from where his brother fell—the assassin’s apparent location—to a nearby pond. The next day, he and others found the same prints on the other side of the pond and followed them to the home of Richard Smith, described as an “Indian negro.” Smith was arrested wearing the boots, though he had removed the heels and some of the distinctive nails from them.

Smith was arrested and taken to Fort Smith, where the boot prints were among the circumstantial evidence used against him, as well as testimony from a witness who said Smith had come to him on the day of the shooting wet from the waist down and asked his help in removing the heels and nails. He was convicted on August 21, 1888, and the Arkansas Gazette reported that “he killed Pringle because he had traded him a stolen cow and feared his victim would prosecute him for so doing.”

On November 3, 1888, Judge Isaac Parker sentenced Smith to hang on January 25, 1889. Smith sought a presidential commutation of the sentence but was notified on January 12 that President Grover Cleveland “declined to interfere.”

On January 24, 1889, Smith was baptized into the Catholic faith “and made his confession to the priest in accordance with the rites of the church.”

On the morning of January 25, “after stowing away a hearty breakfast,” Smith “prayed most of the time in the forenoon.” At 12:30 p.m., he was taken from the jail to the gallows, where Father Lawrence Smythe held brief services. Asked if he had any last words, “with the cross of his adopted church in his hand he declared he knew nothing about the murder…and was an innocent man.” The trap door opened at 12:50 p.m., and a newspaper reported “he was given a drop of 8 ½ feet, and died in ten minutes, though his neck was not broken.” He was buried in Fort Smith’s Oak Cemetery.

For additional information:
Akins, Jerry. Hangin’ Times in Fort Smith: A History of Executions in Judge Parker’s Court. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2012.

“Dropped to Their Doom.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 26, 1889, p. 6.

“For Bloody Murder.” Arkansas Gazette, August 22, 1888, p. 1.

“Hanged for Murder.” Arkansas Gazette, January 26, 1889, p. 3.

“Indian Territory Criminals.” Arkansas Gazette, January 13, 1889, p. 1.

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835–1966,” PhD dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2012. Online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed September 16, 2027).

“Sentenced to Hang.” Arkansas Gazette, November 4, 1888, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas