First inmate executed at San Quentin in 1893
One hundred and thirty years ago a San Diegan became the first person in California to be executed by the state at San Quentin. On March 3, 1893, José Gabriel, who was dubbed “Indian Joe,” by local newspapers, was hanged for murdering an aged farm couple who lived in Otay Mesa.
Details from Gabriel’s execution appeared on the front page of The San Diego Union the next day, but on page four, the paper editorialized that, “only poor men and friendless” were punished for capital offenses.
According to accounts in the Union, on evening of Sunday, Oct. 16, 1892, two neighbors, Fred Piper Sr., and his son, Freddie Jr., went to the home of John and Sophia Wilhelmina Geyser after a younger Piper child reported hearing someone yelling. The neighbors found an Indian named Jose Gabriel inside the house and violently subdued him. The bludgeoned bodies of the Geysers were found outside. A bloodstained purse was found in the pocket of Gabriel, who had been working for the couple, digging a cistern.
On the witness stand, though an interpreter, Gabriel denied his guilt, saying he had not seen the bodies and had only come to the house to get something to eat. But on Dec. 4, 1892, the jury found Gabriel guilty of murder in the first degree. Referring to California’s new sentencing laws, Judge George Puterbaugh in San Diego Superior Court sentenced Gabriel to be hanged. The new law required that all executions in the state take place in San Quentin Prison.
On the morning of March 3, 1893 Gabriel walked to the gallows and, at 10 a.m. that day, was hanged. He was the first of 215 to be hanged at San Quentin before the gas chamber was installed in 1938.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and closed the death chamber at San Quentin, saying the death penalty had been unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color, people with mental disabilities, and people who cannot afford costly legal representation.
Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. But the state has not carried out an execution in 17 years, since Clarence Ray Allen was executed on Jan. 17, 2006. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is working to dismantle its death row in San Quentin State Prison and move the 671 individuals to various prisons throughout the state. Public comment period for the regulations ends March 8.
EDITORIAL:
The execution of Indian Joe was a fitting sequel to the Otay tragedy. For once the law has been found equal to the proper punishment of a capital offender in this state. Had this poor wretch been well supplied with friends and money the result, as in numerous other instances, might have been different. Many a man has taken a life in California and bought his neck out of the halter.
Joe Gabriel deserved to die, but hundreds as guilty as he have lived to boast of their misdeeds because they ad the means of purchasing their freedom. It is a discreditable state of things that only poor men and friendless pay the penalty of their crimes.