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The Trial And Execution Of Thomas Bird In Portland, Maine, 1790: The First Execution Under The United State Constitution, Jerry Genesio
The Trial And Execution Of Thomas Bird In Portland, Maine, 1790: The First Execution Under The United State Constitution, Jerry Genesio
Maine History
Surprisingly few accounts exist of the execution of an Englishman named Thomas Bird in Portland in 1790, even though Bird's execution was the first of the nation's young federal court system. The newly established U.S. District Court for the District of Maine tried Bird for the ''piratical murder" of Captain John Connor, master of the English slave-trading sloop, Mary. Crew members killed Connor and threw his body overboard off the canst of Africa in 1789. When authorities captured the Mary off the coast of Maine, they arrested three men: Bird; Hans Hanson, a Norwegian; and Josiah Jackson, an American. Yet …