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#Post#: 6977--------------------------------------------------
New York Justice III: The Samuel Brewster Case Some
Similiarities
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: June 12, 2026, 7:02 am
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New York Sun
July 17, 1887
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KNIFED HIM IN THE HEART.
COLD-BLOODED MURDER IN A GRAND STREET LIQUOR SALOON.
A Quarrel that Came About Through Dice Throwing has a Serious
Ending—The Police are looking for the Murderer.
Ebo Williams, a colored man, was stabbed in the heart yesterday
by Samuel Brewster in James McShane's saloon
at 36 Grand street, and bled to death in a few minutes.
Williams, who was also known as Frank Jackson, came to
this city three months ago from Baltimore and went to live with
a woman in the tenement at 79 MacDougal Street.
He occasionally worked along the riverfront, but spent most of
his time in East Brooklyn saloons and poolrooms
where card saloons played.
At 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, Williams, Brewster, Charles
Hickey, and John Vale, who are all colored, met in Grand street,
near Thompson street, and went into McShane's saloon at 36, and
drank. They went out on the walk, where Williams and
Hickey began a poker dice game for ten cents a corner. Hickey
won several times and finally charged Williams with using
a dice on which were two four spots. Williams called Hickey a
liar, put the dice in his pocket, and walked away with Vale.
Hickey and Brewster went into the saloon and ordered two
schooners of beer. Soon they had emptied their glasses. Williams
and Vale walked into the saloon and drank with Hickey, with a
cane in his hand, walked up to Williams and called him a black
thief. Williams threw the beer out of his glass on to the floor
and raised the big glass bottle. Hickey with it. Brewster then
got
between the men and ordered them to keep quiet or quick the
place. Hickey then went up a fancy kick. Brewster got hold
behind
Hickey and, reaching over his shoulder, plunged a dirk knife
into Williams' left side. Williams fell on the floor and Hickey
and Brewster
walked quietly out of the saloon. Barrett and Wales say that
they did not see the blow struck, and thought at first that a
fist had
been thrown. The victim had no knife in his hand then. They say
they saw
that he had been stabbed. Two minutes later, Williams was dead.
When the police arrived Brewster and Hickey had disappeared, and
no one seemed to know where they lived. Barrett and
Wales were arrested as witnesses and the body was carried in a
stretcher to the Prince street station and laid on the floor
of the sitting room. A dozen policemen who came into the
waiting room shortly afterward looked unconcernedly at the
negro's body and after taking off their coats sat near the
window within a few feet of the corpse and smoked tobacco and
joked.
The police are looking for Brewster and Hickey, and they expect
to find them.
Similarities were found between Amer Ben Ali's situation and Sam
Brewster's, three years earlier.
* Courtroom familiars: Judge Smyth and Brewster's defense
counsels Fred House and Manny Friend
* A man on trial for first-degree murder
* A person of color on trial for first-degree murder.
* Defendant found guilty of murder in the second degree.
Unlike the verdict in the Ali trial, there was not one word
from the newspapers
regarding the Brewster decision, despite it obviously
warranting a first-degree verdict.
Trial concluded on April 24,1888
* Both Ali and Brewster were sent to Sing Sing.
* Friend and House requested a new trial ( Ali's counsel filed
an appeal on July 10),
in both cases....and were denied each time.
* There was also one more similarity between this case and the
Brown Murder case.
Before the Ali trial, Fred House became ill...and the case was
postponed for a while. He also
was under the weather when delivering the defense's summation.
In the Brewster case, House got sick during the proceedings and
had to be assisted out of the
room by co-counsel Friend.
Even Brewster's friend testified against him in court, being
present at the crime
scene....yet Brewster (happily) received a life sentence.
Judge Smyth told Brewster at the conclusion of the trial that he
was very lucky in not
receiving the death penalty. Smyth was emphatic on that point,
too.
Unlike Ali, who had he been convicted of first-degree murder
would have had a date with the
electric chair....Brewster would have been hanged.
In New York State in 1888, the legal method of execution was
still hanging. The condemned were executed by the gallows,
typically using the "long-drop" method intended to break the
neck.
However, 1888 was a transition year. On June 4, 1888, New York
enacted the law replacing hanging with electrocution, becoming
the first
jurisdiction in the world to adopt the electric chair as its
official method of execution. The new law did not result in
immediate
electrocutions; the first execution by electricity was William
Kemmler at Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890.
Before June 4, 1888: Hanging was the legal method.
After June 4, 1888: Electrocution was the statutory method, but
no one was actually electrocuted until 1890. In practice,
executions in
1888 were still carried out by hanging.
For example, New York executed Danny Lyons (August 21, 1888) and
Francis Asbury Hawkins (December 11, 1888) by hanging, even
though the electrocution law had already been enacted.
The 4 articles in the PDF below
1- New York Sun July 22, 1887
2- New York Evening World April 20, 1888
3- New York Tribune April 20, 1888
4- New York Sun April 24, 1888
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