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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Through the ‘gallows gates’

Two men were ordered hanged at the Spokane County Courthouse following convictions of first-degree murder. A third, Charles Brooks, was hanged in Spokane County in 1892 before the construction of the courthouse and the iron gates that are planned to be restored there.

Brooks was found guilty of murdering his wife, Christine Dohlman, a much younger immigrant from Sweden. Brooks reportedly shot Dohlman to death on Havermale Island, now part of Riverfront Park. Brooks was hanged on the Spokane County Courthouse grounds Sept. 6, 1892, in front of 1,000 spectators, according to newspaper accounts. The hanging preceded completion of the current county courthouse by three years.

Another man, H.D. Smith, was sentenced to hang for the 1892 murder of John Wyant, a Spangle farmer, but he killed himself to avoid capture after attempting escape in July 1895.

The men who walked through the gates to their deaths:

Gin Pong was convicted of murdering an associate named Lee Tung, reportedly over an insult about handwriting, at a downtown tavern frequented by Chinese immigrants in 1896. The murder weapons were a pair of hatchets, one wielded in each hand by an enraged Pong, according to newspaper accounts of the time. Pong was known around the jail for a “peculiar laugh,” according to newspaper accounts, and ate a hearty breakfast of three pork chops, three fried eggs, eight slices of bread, three baked potatoes and two cups of coffee before his execution on April 30, 1897.

George Webster was the last man to hang at the Spokane County Courthouse before the governor ordered all executions take place at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Webster was convicted of murder in the shooting death of Lize Aspland in May 1897. Webster, a farmhand, arrived at Andrew Aspland’s farm northwest of Cheney late in the evening. He drank, then reportedly shot Aspland’s wife through a window during a dispute. A petition with more than 100 signatures from local attorneys, businessmen and others wasn’t enough to sway Gov. John R. Rogers for clemency, and Webster was hanged March 30, 1900.

Hanging remains one of two ways a prisoner may be executed in Washington; the other is lethal injection. Gov. Jay Inslee announced a moratorium on the death penalty in Washington in February 2014.

Sources: Spokane Historical Society; Spokane Law Enforcement Museum; ”Life Behind the Badge: The Spokane Police Department’s Founding Years, 1881-1903” by Suzanne and Tony Bamonte; and archives of The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Daily Chronicle.