Law Enforcement

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Entry Category: Law Enforcement - Starting with P

Pegues, Chris (Execution of)

Chris Pegues was an African American man executed at Augusta (Woodruff County) on October 9, 1885, for the murder of his “paramour.” Pegues was convicted of first-degree murder in Woodruff County on August 28, 1885, for killing Mollie Banks in late December 1884. Some 3,000 people gathered at Augusta on the day of his execution and speaking “in an intelligent, calm way,” Pegues told the crowd of his stormy relationship with Banks. They met in Lake County, Mississippi, in 1883. Banks was separated from her husband, and after she and Pegues became involved, they moved to Arkansas, where they intended for her to get a divorce in February 1885 so that they could get married. Acquaintances in Arkansas, however, tried …

Penal Systems

aka: Prisons
The penal system of Arkansas has been fraught with controversy through the years. It has been central to the careers of some of the state’s governors and has more than once drawn national and international attention for its faults and shortcomings. Beginnings Many of the Europeans who settled in the United States believed that the chief purpose of government was to punish sinners while leaving the righteous alone. As a result, many of the early actions of colonial and territorial Arkansas pertained to crime and punishment (as was the case across North America). Arkansas Post was a colonial settlement of the French and Spanish (mostly the French) during the seventeenth century; a prison was one of the first structures to …

Peters, Albert (Execution of)

Albert Peters was a young African American man hanged on December 30, 1887, at Marianna (Lee County) for murdering the husband of his “paramour.” Albert Peters was born into slavery at the Dr. G. B. Peters Plantation near Council Bend in Lee County on October 10, 1860. His family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, after the Civil War, and then to Phillips County, where he attended Southland College. Peters was later described as “very black, medium hight [sic] and weight, clean shaven face and had a tolerable fair education, being able to read very well and write a respectable hand.” By 1885, he was once again living on the Peters plantation but, early that year, went to Phillips County, “where he …

Pettus, Phillip (Execution of)

Phillip Pettus was an African American man hanged on August 24, 1894, in Helena (Phillips County) after being convicted of first-degree murder for killing his wife. Phillip Pettus may be the same man listed in the 1880 census as H. P. Pettice, age twenty-eight, a “mulatto” farmer who lived in Phillips County’s Cypress township with his wife, Emma, age twenty-three, and their two sons. By 1893, Pettus reportedly “mistreated his wife” to the point that she left him and went to work at another plantation near Hyde Park (Phillips County). Pettus repeatedly begged her to return to him, but she refused. Pettus told her that “she had better say prayers[,] for if she refused to live with him she would …

Phillips County Penal Farm Historic District

The Phillips County Penal Farm Historic District, located on Phillips County Road 353 south of U.S. 49 near Poplar Grove, contains a main jail building constructed of concrete with a large concrete block section at the rear, two additional concrete block jail buildings, and a cast-concrete water tower. The complex is no longer in use and is heavily overgrown, but it still reflects its original use as a county prison farm. According to Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas, a sturdy jail was a local priority from the earliest days of Phillips County. The first structure built for county use was a two-story log building that housed a courtroom above and a jail below, which were soon replaced …

Pippin, Essex (Execution of)

Essex Pippin (sometimes listed as Pipkin), a nineteen-year-old African American man, was hanged at Vanndale (Cross County) on October 11, 1901, after being convicted of raping two women. On July 29, 1901, a man reportedly raped a Black woman named Leah Wooden and then attacked Mrs. Allen Taylor, described in contemporaneous newspaper accounts as “a respectable white woman, who is the wife of a prominent farmer living near Wynne” in Cross County. Essex Pippin, who lived about a quarter mile from Vanndale, was soon arrested and rushed to the state penitentiary in Little Rock (Pulaski County) by local lawmen to protect him from “lynching at the hands of a rapidly forming excited populace,” providing “a narrow escape from death by …

Poe, Harry (Trial and Execution of)

Harry Poe was the first person legally executed in Garland County, Arkansas. On January 18, 1910, Harry Poe, an African American teenager, allegedly raped Lena Adams, a younger white girl. A Garland County court convicted Poe of rape on March 1, 1910, and sentenced him to death. Several residents of the county believed that Poe was innocent and attempted to save his life. On September 2, 1910, Harry Poe was executed. The details of Poe’s life before the alleged rape are unclear. Available newspapers variously listed his age as seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, and provided no details about his life before the incident. Census records do not provide any likely matches for Harry Poe. A writer for the Arkansas Democrat described him in overtly racist language as “a thick-lipped, low-browed, bestial type of negro.” On January …

Pointer, John (Execution of)

On April 3, 1874, a young Native American man named John Pointer was executed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for allegedly murdering a white man named Blue in Choctaw Territory in 1872. Although there was some doubt as to how thorough authorities were in pursuing defense witnesses, Pointer was eventually executed for the crime. According to historian Jerry Akins, Pointer was an eighteen-year-old Seminole man “of middle size and good countenance.” According to Pointer’s story, he and his brother and Sam McGee were near the Canadian River in the Choctaw Nation when McGee declared that he intended to kill someone. When they met a drover named Blue, McGee said he would kill him, and the Pointer brothers tried to dissuade …

Prison Reform

The poor condition of Arkansas prisons has long been a subject of controversy in the state. The national prison system as a whole, and particularly in the South, was substandard up to the 1960s. Repeated scandal, evidence of extensive violence and rape, and violation of human rights brought national attention to Arkansas, placing pressure on the state to reform its penal system. Through a series of reforms beginning in 1967, the Arkansas prison system greatly improved, although issues of overcrowding still plague the state today. Calls for prison reform began in the late nineteenth century, especially with regard to the system of convict leasing, whereby prisoners were rented out to labor for private enterprises, often in horrible conditions. Governor George …

Pulaski County Penal Farm

From 1918 to 1974, the Pulaski County government operated a prison facility—commonly known as the County Farm—on a 640-acre farm located west of Little Rock (Pulaski County) at the confluence of the Arkansas River and the Little Maumelle River. After the facility was closed in 1974 as a result of an order by a federal judge, the site later became Two Rivers Park, which is accessed from State Highway 10 on County Farm Road. The County Farm was preceded by a series of “convict camps” and “convict farms.” In the early twentieth century, the prisoners were used for labor for county roads and bridges and were contracted out to private concerns for farm labor and land clearing. These early facilities were …