by David Flint
Cries of “Appeal! Appeal!” and “Collusion of witnesses!” erupted from the audience following the re-enactment of the trial of Whiting Sweeting at the Stephentown Heritage Center last Monday evening.
Whiting Sweeting of Stephentown, son of a prominent local doctor, was convicted of murder in July of 1791 and was later hanged in Albany. [private]Town Historian Pat Flint, preparing a program on Stephentown murders in the 17th and 18th centuries, found the Sweeting murder particularly interesting and so decided to re-enact the trial for the Historical Society. The script for the re-enactment was developed out of a booklet published in 1793 that purported to include a transcript of the trial.
It seems Sweeting was thought to have stolen an iron kettle and a warrant was issued for his arrest. A Constable by the name of Martin set out from Albany and met up with some yokels in West Stephentown. Martin, by his own admission, drank rum with this crowd, after which at least five of them volunteered to go along to help arrest Sweeting. One of the yokels was Darius Quimby. This posse eventually caught up with Sweeting, at night and in deep snow. Sweeting, fearing what he perceived as a “drunken mob,” tried to get away, but Quimby grabbed him, and they both fell in the snow with Constable Martin landing on top. A knife that Sweeting had in his hand somehow got plunged into Quimby,
At the trial Martin and five members of the posse testified against Sweeting, one saying that he thought he saw Sweeting’s arm moving back and forth as if striking at Quimby with something.
There were no witnesses for the defense. Sweeting, speaking in his own defense, declared that his counsel had abandoned him. He questioned how the witnesses in the dark of night in deep crusty snow and amid a great “hollowing and yelling” could be sure of what they supposedly saw and heard. “Would it not have deserved a moment’s thought, whether a party of men…though clothed with the authority of the law, getting drunk and committing a riot, ought not to leave a doubt on the mind whether full faith and credit ought to be placed upon their testimony in a cause of life and death; and of the truth of so many circumstances related by them, happening in their heat and zeal, fomented by…plentiful draughts of rum, which they said they had with them?”
The judge was not moved. Charging the jury, he said, “If an officer is killed, doing his duty, it is murder…Resisting an officer is unlawful. It is also murder if committed on those called to assist an officer in the execution of his office.”
The verdict was guilty, and the judge proceeded to announce the sentence of death by hanging, “and the Lord have mercy on your poor soul.”
The all-star cast in this trial included Tom Quimby as – no, not the deceased deputy Constable – but the defendant Whiting Sweeting. Retired law professor John Walsh played the very able prosecutor. John Meekins, about to run unopposed for Stephentown Town Justice played the crusty judge, of course, and John Beach was Constable Martin. Members of the drunken posse included Everett Madden, Frank Mohos, Larry Holder, Town Supervisor Larry Eckhardt and this reporter, David Flint.
Darius Quimby, the victim of this “murder,” has been recognized as the first known law enforcement officer to be killed in the line of duty in the United States. His name appears on the NYS Police Officers Memorial wall at the Empire State Plaza in Albany. His is the earliest date listed.
Whiting Sweeting’s harsh sentence included having his body “delivered to the surgeon for dissection.” The surgeon, however, according to the book, “had the humanity to deliver it to a brother of the sufferer’s, who took it to his friends in Stephentown, where it was decently interred.” The burial site is not known. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Lewis Sweeting moved his family out of Stephentown to Onondaga County.[/private]