Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Address of the President to Congress December 7, 1915
File No. 419.11H23/43.
Minister Price to the Secretary of State.
Panama, June 11, 1915.
Sir: Referring to my despatch No. 514 of May 18 in the case of William T. Harrington, I have the honor to enclose herewith copy of the note transmitted to the Panaman Foreign Office, responding to the late note of Secretary Lefevre herein and making a demand for payment of an indemnity of $5,000 in accordance with the Department’s instruction No. 139 [129] of April 27 last.
I have [etc.]
Minister Price to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
Panama, June 10, 1915.
Excellency: I have the honor to inform your excellency that the courteous note No. S–6626 of May 11 last, transmitted by your excellency in the case of the late William T. Harrington, has been read and considered with all due care.
It is noted that the response and argument of your excellency are almost entirely devoted to the attempt to prove that the unfortunate Harrington, now dead, was mentally deranged at the time of and before the passing of sentence upon him by the judge in Colon and his incarceration in the prison at Porto Bello.
I would call to your excellency’s attention that the speculation indulged in by the Zone chief of police, from whose report a quotation was made, related to an explanation of the reason for the commission of the theft by Harrington, and that the following sentence in the part of his report quoted by your excellency, namely, “It seems quite probable that his insanity may have been the cause of the entire transaction,” referred not to Harrington’s experiences afterwards, but to the matter of the commission of the small theft, taking into consideration that the offense was not likely to be committed by a high grade employee of the Canal Commission, such as Harrington was. It is interesting to note in this connection the opinion which the Panaman alcalde who tried Harrington gave expression to regarding the condition in which Harrington was, out of which resulted his commission of the petty offense. Alcalde Andrian, being asked by the Governor in his examination of this case the following question: “Did you notice any symptoms of mental disorder in Mr. Harrington when he was examined by you?” replied thus: “I did not notice any signs of dementia in Mr. Harrington, but by the dirt on his clothes and other signs I understood that he had been drinking too much the previous day and night.”
Both the statements of the Canal Zone police chief and of the alcalde of Colon are to the effect as to what may have been possible or probable, and as between the two, Señor Andrian had much better opportunity to judge and his opinion is likely very much nearer correct. It would seem undoubtedly to be, in as much as the record in this case shows, that physicians with their scientific training in such matters and others with an acquaintance and association with Harrington, which neither the Alcalde nor Chief Fyffe had, have stated that Mr. Harrington was at this time suffering from no physical or mental disorder. The latter character of evidence was referred to at sufficient length in the note of my Government in this case of date of September 8, 1914, to which your excellency’s recent note was a response, to make repetition of it inappropriate, beyond reference again to the fact that the examination by the district physician of the Isthmian Canal Commission just two days before Mr. Harrington’s arrest found him in sound physical and mental condition. It can not quite be believed that the statements of police agents and interested parties, [Page 1259] which your excellency has seen fit to quote from extensively in your recent note, are really considered by your excellency as testimony of the same weight or grade of that referred to, nor as even approaching it in trustworthiness.
In averting now to the argument of your excellency that the conduct of Mr. Harrington at the time of his first detention and his trial furnished proof of existence then of mental disorder, it is pertinent to quote the following paragraph from your excellency’s note.
Any other American citizen, even if not an employee of the I. C. C. in the class of Harrington (and he, too, would have so proceeded if he had been sane), would have refused to pass the night of April 22 in jail but would have given bail and on the next day would not have acquiesced in a sentence of 60 days for taking a bottle of ginger ale without appealing to the protection of other people and would have taken legal steps to lessen his sentence.
It will be borne in mind that Mr. Harrington had only been on the Isthmus twelve days preceding his arrest, having arrived at the Pacific terminus of the Canal from San Francisco. He had secured employment by the Canal Commission at the Atlantic terminus eleven days after his arrival, more than 40 miles away, and only one day before his disagreeable experiences began with Panaman officials. He was waiting to begin his work as a high grade skilled machinist at the wages of sixty-five cents gold per hour when these experiences fell to his lot. It must be true, therefore, that the acquaintances made by Mr. Harrington up to that time were very limited. However, experiences of numerous American citizens with the police and court officials of your excellency’s Government have proven that no matter how long one has lived on the Isthmus nor how large may be the acquaintanceship he may have formed, nor how reasonably accessible these acquaintances may be, there exists no assurance that, even when charged with a small misdemeanor, as in this case, they will be permitted any opportunity to give bond or obtain proper means of defense.
It so happens, just now, that other claims in addition to this one, are pending against your excellency’s Government, in which are involved, among other elements of damage, the mistreatment of citizens of the United States in these same respects. The system practiced in Panama of keeping American citizens “incomunicado,” particularly when charged with the smaller degrees of offenses, and of refusing their insistent requests to communicate with friends who could go bond for them, and to give them proper opportunities to obtain witnesses and prepare their defenses, has been a source of severe irritation to the Government of the United States; it is on a par with the use of stocks, as in this case, in attempted discipline of prisoners; both are out of keeping with the practices of civilization and certainly with those considerations due for several reasons particularly from Panama to citizens of the United States.
The very proper admissions made by your excellency in the paragraph quoted above from your note are intended to be emphasized by the incorporation of same in this note. Said paragraph characterizes any American citizen insane, who would suffer incarceration first in jail over night and then a sentence to hard labor in a convict camp for sixty days for the miserably small infraction of “taking a bottle of ginger-ale,” without appealing to the protection of other people and to legal recourses to lessen the sentence. It is represented to your excellency that said treatment of an American citizen by an official of the Panaman Government and the infliction of such a penalty under the circumstances are susceptible of the same argument that they are plain proofs of the insanity of said official and that if said official were not laboring under insanity, when visiting such abnormal and disproportionate exercise of his authority, then, in keeping with the cruel treatment by other officials of Panama later applied to said American citizen, there has been exhibited a lack of capability, or a reckless disregard of the rights of humanity, or both, on the part of officials of Panama, which no Government to which a sufferer therefrom may own allegiance can, with due regard to its obligations, countenance without proper reparation being made therefor.
The more carefully the evidence in this case is considered, the more reprehensible would seem to be the treatment accorded Mr. Harrington by the several officials of Panama involved. It is admitted that the proprietor of the saloon from which the bottle of ginger-ale was taken interceded with the policeman who arrested Harrington, to turn him loose, feeling the offense was so trifling that he did not care to take further notice of it, and feeling doubtless, too, that the offense was, perhaps, committed in a spirit of playfulness or when possibly under the influence of drink. Your excellency, very naturally astonished by the severity of the sentence adjudged against Harrington, in [Page 1260] attempting to explain it states that it is evident same would not have been imposed had not the alcalde believed that Harrington was one of the many thieves and vagabonds infesting Colon. However, the alcalde claims no justification for his action on this ground. The reasons given by your excellency for the above supposition are given by the alcalde as convincing him that this high grade and skilled employee was simply under the influence of liquor when he committed this act. Usually such a fact is taken into consideration as indicating the absence of criminal intention on a charge like this and, the sentence is made less, at least, instead of being more severe.
Now, for the sake of argument and for that purpose alone, let it be granted that Mr. Harrington was demented from the time he first fell into the hands of officials of Panama. Your excellency of course must concede that in such a case not only is a prison an improper place for keeping in custody such an unfortunate but that certainly labor as a convict under a tropical sun and whipping with a club and the clamping of heavy wooden stocks, and, according to testimony in the record, with face and stomach down on one occasion, would be more than highly improper; that in case of a man so afflicted, kindness and humane treatment, patience and forbearance, if lacking would convict those in custody of the unfortunate man of most guilty cruelty.
It is noted that in making the argument that Mr. Harrington was insane from the inception of this whole affair your excellency incidentally remarks that it is proper to suppose that the Panama officials did not perceive this condition because, to quote from your excellency’s note, “neither the employees of the Isthmian Canal Commission nor the doctors whom your excellency cites in his note discovered the mental derangement of this individual.” These employees and doctors make said statements not inferentially or as deductions, but with positiveness, as distinguished from the basis upon which your excellency argues. Moreover, the police agents of your excellency’s Government do not claim for themselves this inability to discover Mr. Harrington’s mental condition, but rather, as a justification for placing him in stocks and disciplining him, give as a reason that Harrington did and said things that showed him to be mentally deranged.
Your excellency seems to have labored under a misapprehension in quoting from my predecessor as having admitted the use of stocks to be proper with prisoners. The language used in said connection is of an argumentative character—granting for sake of argument, in other words. To make it more plain and to reiterate as a part of this note the balance of the same sentence of my predecessor there is incorporated the same herewith, namely:
In presenting this case to your excellency my Government instructs me to say that it has confidence that the matter will receive sympathetic and equitable action and that, however possible it may be in some cases to make proper use of stocks for the restraint of prisoners, it is incontrovertible that they can be, and in the Harrington case have been made an instrument of torture, and that therefore my Government will not permit its citizens to be subjected to this treatment.
Wherefore it would seem incontestable that if Mr. Harrington was mentally deranged at all the times claimed by your excellency the fact could only aggravate the liability of your excellency’s Government herein; that it could hardly be argued that the death of Mr. Harrington was caused by his insanity; and therefore this, at least, and the greatest of the two sad eventualities in his case, must be answered for. When your excellency is compelled by the facts to admit, as in the note to which this is a response, that it can not be effectively contradicted that the man now dead had wounded and inflamed legs and that these wounds were undoubtedly caused by the stocks, and it is further admitted, as it was in the report of investigation in this matter in 1910 by the Governor of Panama to the Department of Government and Justice of your excellency’s Government, that the lieutenant of police, Hernandez, who was in charge of Mr. Harrington, had been guilty of other misdeeds in his office in addition to the accusation herein, and this poor defenseless prisoner is found at last in his custody in a condition where he could not walk as the result of the wounds inflicted on his limbs and presenting such an appealing and intensely distressing sight that 108 fellow Americans are moved by it to hold an indignation meeting and demand that such wrongs shall be redressed, and the remembrances of the tortures to which he has been subjected return to add to his sufferings, as testified to in this record, in his hours of dementia, then these facts would seem to add not only forceful proof to the other convincing evidence which the United States had taken much care to procure herein, but should, it is believed, elicit from your excellency’s Government a response in keeping with the dictates [Page 1261] of justice and humanity and of willingness cordially to right a wrong. My Government fails to find in the arguments presented by your excellency any reason to change its conviction, heretofore formed after most careful deliberation, as to the agencies responsible for bringing about the insanity and death of Mr. Harrington.
Nearly five years now having elapsed since the commission of these wrongs and the widow and family of the deceased as well as the representatives from their State in our Congress on behalf of them being very properly urgent that this matter shall be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, my Government in deference not only thereto, but to its obligations to its citizens in the abstract, and being unable to see that there can be any good reason for further protracted discussion herein, must insist upon prompt indemnification herein by the Government of Panama.
Suffering and loss of life, in such cases as this can never be fully compensated, but, measured as far as money damages may compensate and yet in estimating same due regard having been given to all that your excellency’s Government has been able to present on behalf of itself herein, my Government instructs me to inform your excellency’s Government that it deems the sum of five thousand dollars to be a most considerate and moderate indemnity to the bereaved ones in this sad affair, and to demand the payment of same, which is hereby respectfully done.
I avail [etc.]