Law Enforcement

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Entry Category: Law Enforcement - Starting with S

Sarber, John Newton

John Newton Sarber was a Union soldier who remained in Arkansas after the Civil War and served in the state Senate, where he introduced a number of influential bills, including those creating the public school system and what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He also served as U.S. marshal of the U.S. Western District Court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Logan County was originally named Sarber County in his honor. John Newton Sarber was born on October 28, 1837, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Stephen and Lucille Sarber; he had one brother and two sisters. His mother died giving birth in 1849. The abolitionist family moved to Kansas Territory in 1855. Sarber and his father …

Schumann, Clarence (Trial and Execution of)

Clarence Schumann was the second of only two people legally executed in Garland County (Harry Poe, an African–American teenager, was the first). On July 11, 1912, Schumann, a white man, murdered his wife after she refused to grant him a divorce. At trial, Schumann’s lawyers argued that his addiction to morphine rendered him insane and that he should be spared the death penalty. On October 29, 1912, however, a Garland County jury found Schumann guilty and sentenced him to death. He was executed on June 2, 1913.   On July 11, 1912, Clarence Schumann came home from work to find his wife, Lula, gathering clothes in the backyard. He shot her twice with his pistol, killing her. Garland County authorities arrested him that evening. When questioned, Schumann explained that he was angry that his wife would not grant him …

Scott, George Washington

George Washington Scott was Arkansas Territory’s first U.S. marshal, serving from 1820 to 1831, as well as the state’s first auditor and the first clerk of the Territorial General Assembly. However, his volatile personality negated many of his early accomplishments, and he died a violent death in almost total obscurity. George Washington Scott was born in June 1798 in Virginia. He was one of six children of Andrew and Elizabeth Scott; his older brother, Andrew Horatio Scott, was later appointed as one of the first judges of the Arkansas Territory Superior Court. The family was living near St. Louis in the new Louisiana Territory as early as 1805. In 1808, they moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. By 1815, they were …

Scott, Ralph Downing, Sr.

Ralph Downing Scott Sr. had a long career in law enforcement and served as director of the Arkansas State Police during most of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller’s administration. In this capacity, Scott enacted many reforms to the Arkansas State Police that improved the professionalism of the department. Ralph Scott was born in McCaskill (Hempstead County) on February 2, 1914, to Burton L. Scott and Grace Bonner Scott. He was the oldest of the couple’s three sons and graduated in 1931 from high school in Prescott (Nevada County). He received a BA in chemistry from Hendrix College in 1935. In 1939, he received a Bachelor of Commercial Science in accounting from Southeastern University in Washington DC. Scott married Ruth Hirst in 1940, …

Shank, Mark H. (Execution of)

Mark H. Shank was an Akron, Ohio, attorney executed at Tucker State Prison Farm on March 8, 1935, for poisoning four members of the Alvin Colley family in Arkansas. Mark H. Shank was a partner in Akron’s Cain & Shank law firm. He was defending a man named Clarence Braucher on a forgery charge and hired Alvin Colley, a young machine operator who lived in Medina, Ohio, in 1930, to steal documents in the case from the prosecutor’s office. After bragging around Akron about the crime and Shank’s role in it, Colley and his family fled to Arkansas, living in Hot Springs (Garland County) as the Roy Fetty family. On August 15, 1933, Shank and the Colleys went for a …

Sharp, William (Murder of)

Several online lynching lists and the Equal Justice Initiative indicate that an African American man named George Bert was lynched in Desha County on July 21, 1883. Investigation of this lynching reveals a number of confusing reports. While the Wheeling Intelligencer lists the victim as George Bert, other papers identify him as Albert Beth, Albert Best, Albert Vess, and Albert Vest. The incident also led to an interesting discussion at the time on the state’s practice of leasing state prisoners to convict farms across Arkansas. The reported lynching arose out of the murder of a prisoner named William Sharp by an overseer named Alfred Werner (occasionally referred to as Warner) on the Desha County prison farm. (The Wheeling Intelligencer gives …

Simms, Lee (Trial and Execution of)

A young African-American man named Lee Simms (sometimes identified as Sims) was executed in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on September 5, 1913; he was the first person to die in Arkansas’s new electric chair. In June 1913, the Arkansas General Assembly passed a law specifying that future executions would be carried out at the state penitentiary in Little Rock using the electric chair. Prior to this, executions had been performed in the county where the crime occurred, and hanging was used. According to the Newark Journal, Arkansas’s chair was a “home-made product,” built at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) at a cost of $702.05. It was tested successfully in mid-August on a large steer and found …

Smith, Pamela A.

Pamela A. Smith became the first African American woman to head the United States Park Police when she was appointed in 2021. She served for a little over a year before resigning to take a position with the Washington DC Police Department, later rising to the position of chief of police. Pamela A. Smith was born on January 4, 1968, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to Walter Lee Smith Sr. and Eddie Mae Bass Sanders. Her parents divorced when she was young, and Smith was raised by her mother and her grandmother, Ellatrise Bass. Growing up on the east side of Pine Bluff, she went through the local schools—Forrest Park and Oak Park Elementary Schools, Southeast Middle School, and Dial …

Speers, J. E. (Execution of)

J. E. Speers was hanged on May 27, 1892, in Magnolia (Columbia County) for the slaying of a Ouachita County timber man, a crime he claimed was committed in self-defense. J. E. Speers was born in 1863 in St. Francis County. He married Annie Hutson, “a rustic beauty,” near Brinkley (Monroe County) twenty years later, and they would have five children, two of whom lived. Speers worked as a railroad engineer for some time, but by 1892 “for several years ha[d] been employed in various capacities about saw mills.” The Arkansas Gazette described him as “one of the Smith and Wesson gentry, and an all around tough.” Speers was working at a mill near Camden (Ouachita County) as a night …

Staner, Tom (Trial and Execution of)

The execution of Thomas Preston (Tom) Staner, sometimes spelled “Stainer,” on November 2, 1877, was the last execution to take place in Saline County. Staner was hanged for the murder of Harriet “Hattie” Staner (his uncle’s wife) and her neighbor, Parcell (or “Parlee”) Taylor, at the Staner house on Sulfur Springs Road about eighteen miles northwest of Benton (Saline County). Staner’s weapon of an iron poker, as well as the Staner family Bible and a framed photograph of Mack Staner, are all on display in the front room of the Gann Museum of Saline County. On January 23, 1877, McHenry “Mack” Staner left his home with a load of cotton bound for Little Rock (Pulaski County). His wife Harriet “remained …

Stansberry, John (Execution of)

John Stansberry was hanged on July 9, 1890, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the murder of his wife, a crime he denied committing to the end. John Stansberry and Mollie Eubanks were married in Newton County, Missouri, in October 1885. Stansberry visited the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in early 1889, and he moved with his wife and one-year-old daughter to the Pottawatomie Nation that August. A month later, his wife returned from visiting a neighbor and found the child “with a ghastly wound in its head and it soon expired.” Stansberry told his wife the little girl had fallen off a piece of furniture. The Stansberrys then moved to the Creek Nation. Mollie Stansberry was murdered on the night …

Strickland, Jacob (Execution of)

Jacob Strickland was a U.S. Army infantryman who was executed in 1828 for the murder of a fellow soldier in one of the earliest public judicial executions in the Arkansas Territory. Jacob Strickland, a twenty-seven-year-old farmer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, enlisted in Company H of the Seventh U.S. Infantry Regiment on December 13, 1826; he was listed as five feet seven inches tall with hazel eyes, sandy hair, and a ruddy complexion. He proved not to be a very dedicated soldier, as he was reported as deserting from a base at Natchez, Mississippi, on March 22, 1827, being apprehended the next day. He apparently returned to service. Private Strickland was serving with the Seventh at Cantonment Gibson in what is now …