Robert Stroud - Prison Life

Prison Life

Known as Prisoner #1853-M, Stroud was one of the most violent prisoners at McNeil Island.

Stroud assaulted a hospital orderly who had reported him to the prison administration for attempting to obtain morphine through threats and intimidation, and had also reportedly stabbed a fellow inmate who was involved in the attempt to smuggle the narcotics. On September 5, 1912, Stroud was sentenced to an additional six months for the attacks and was transferred from McNeil Island to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Then on March 26, 1916 after being there six months, Stroud was reprimanded by cafeteria guard, Andrew F. Turner, for a minor rule violation which would have annulled Stroud's visitation privilege to meet his younger brother, whom he had not seen in eight years. Angry at Turner about this, he stabbed Turner to death in a furious rage.

Stroud was convicted of murder and sentenced to execution by hanging on May 2. He was ordered to await his death sentence in solitary confinement. The sentence was thrown out in December by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the jury had not said that it intended for Stroud to hang. In a second trial held in May 1917, he was also convicted, but received a life sentence. That sentence was also thrown out by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds. Stroud was tried a third time starting in May 1918, and on June 28 he was again sentenced to death by hanging. The Supreme Court intervened again, but only to uphold the death sentence, which was scheduled to be carried out on April 23, 1920.

At this point Stroud's mother appealed to President Woodrow Wilson and his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, and the execution was halted and Stroud's sentence was again commuted to life imprisonment. Leavenworth's warden, T. W. Morgan, strongly opposed the decision given Stroud's reputation for violence. Morgan persuaded Wilson to stipulate that since Stroud was originally sentenced to await his death sentence in solitary confinement, those conditions should prevail until the halted execution could be carried out. This in effect sentenced Stroud to a lifetime in solitary.

On December 19, 1942, Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz, where he spent six years in segregation and another 11 confined to the hospital wing. In 1959, Stroud was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he stayed until his death in 1963.

In 1963, Richard M. English, a young lawyer who had campaigned for John F. Kennedy in California, took to the cause of securing Stroud's release. He met with former President Harry Truman to enlist support, but Truman declined. He also met with senior Kennedy administration officials who were studying the subject. English took the last photo of Stroud, in which he is shown with a green visor. The warden of the prison attempted to have English prosecuted for bringing something into the prison he did not take out: unexposed film. The authorities declined to take any action.

Upon Stroud's death, his personal property, including original manuscripts, was delivered to English, as his last legal representative, who later turned over some of the possessions to the Audubon Society.