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On March 21, 1848, between 3 and 4 PM, Ellen Goulding died in Lowell.On March 22, the jury at a Coroner’s Inquest delivered the verdict that Ellen Goulding died “by reason of blows inflicted upon her head by her husband, Barney Goulding.” He was committed to jail until the meeting of the Grand Jury in June.
In June or July, the Grand Jury of Middlesex County returned the indictment of murder.
In December, Goulding pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. At the time there was only one degree of murder and a conviction would have brought the death penalty.
Goulding was offered a plea bargain, though the term was probably not used at the time.
Goulding pleaded guilty to manslaughter, which meant a possible sentence of zero to 20 years.
The judge sentenced Goulding to two years in jail.
Lowell Advertiser July 29, 1851 (Goulding's name is misspelled in the article.)
The following is an excerpt from the article Plea bargaining's triumph by George Fisher (The Yale Law Journal; New Haven, Vol. 109 (Mar 2000): 857-1086):
. . . Charge Bargaining in Murder Cases
[Charles Russell] Train was therefore the fifth in a chain of Middlesex prosecutors, beginning with [Samuel] Dana and running through [Asahel] Stearns, [Asahel] Huntington, and [Albert] Nelson, to exploit an extraordinary power to craft deals in liquor cases. He appears to have been the first Middlesex prosecutor to make use of an analogous, if less precise, power to cut deals in capital cases. I mentioned earlier that the legislature abolished the office of attorney general in 1843. 82 - For six years, before the legislature relented and reinstated the office, 83 the various county prosecutors took on the task of trying capital cases before the Supreme Judicial Court. During their six years before the high court, Middlesex prosecutors conducted three capital trials. In his only murder trial, Huntington won a manslaughter verdict and a seven-year prison sentence. 84 One of Nelson's two trials ended in a conviction and death sentence,85 the other in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. 86
Train had a single capital case before the court-in October 1848-and he avoided trial with a plea-bargaining technique very similar to the one he used in liquor cases before the Court of Common Pleas. Barney Goulding stood charged with murdering his wife, Ellen, by beating her about the head. 87 He pled not guilty at his arraignment and claimed his right to a jury trial. Under a Massachusetts law that granted counsel to capital defendants, the court assigned two prominent members of the Middlesex bar to defend him [Benjamin F. Butler and Theodore H Sweetser]. 88 The clerk recorded what happened next:
And afterward in this same term the said Barney Goulding, otherwise called Barnett Goulding, retracts his [not guilty] plea above pleaded, and says he is guilty of manslaughter. And Charles R. Train, Esquire, attorney for the Commonwealth in this behalf, says, he will no further prosecute this indictment as to the malice aforethought, and the charge of murder. 89
On his manslaughter conviction, the court sentenced Goulding to two years in the house of correction.90
Had Goulding insisted on trial and been convicted of murder, he would have faced the mandatory penalty of death. The legislature did not divide murder into degrees until 1858, and until then all murder remained capital. Train's generosity in nol prossing so much of the murder indictment as charged more than manslaughter shrank Goulding's possible sentence to a term of between zero and twenty years in prison. The judge, as the clerk reported, hewed to the bottom of that range.
Train's was not the first clear plea bargain in a capital case in Massachusetts, though it does appear to have been among the first.
82. See Act of Mar. 24, 1843, ch. 99, 1843 Mass. Acts 60.
83. See Act of May 1, 1849, ch. 186, 1849 Mass. Acts 117.
84. See Commonwealth v. William Goldsmith, Sup. Jud. CL R. Book 456 (Middlesex. Apr. 1845).
85. See Commonwealth v. George Hunnewell, Sup. Jud. CL R. Book 102 (Middlesex. Oct. 1847).
86. See Commonwealth v. Alexander Roy, Sup. Jud. Ct. R. Book 103 (Middlescx. Oct. 1847).
87. See Commonwealth v. Barney Goulding, Sup. Jud. CL R. Book 226 (Middlesex. Oct. 1848); LOWELL J., Mar. 24, 1848, at 4.
88. See Goulding, Sup. Jud. Ct. R. Book at 228 (reporting the appointments of Benjamin F. Butler and Theodore H. Sweetser).
89. Id.
90. See id.[Fisher (March 2000) Pages 885 – 886]
Below are the pages from the original record books referenced in Footnotes 87 - 90 in the above article.
Lowell Courier, March 23, 1848
The jurors were very likely Daniel Samuel Richardson, Oliver March, Abram French, Wiliam C. Gray, and Richard Taft.
Lowell Courier March 24, 1848
Boston Daily Times, March 25, 1848
Lowell Courier, March 25, 1848
The Lowell Advertiser, March 25, 1848
Newburyport Morning Herald, March 29, 1848
New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette
Vermont Mercury, Mach 31, 1848
Semi-Weekly Eagle, March 31, 1848
Middlebury Galaxy, April 4, 1818
Boston Daily Mail, July 19, 1848
Daily Journal and Courier, July 19, 1848
Newport Mercury, July 22, 1848
Lowell Advertiser, December 19, 1848
Vermont Chronicle, January 10, 1849
The following excerpt is from the book Plea Bargaining's Triumph: A History of Plea Bargaining in America by George Fisher, Stanford University Press. 2004.
The Nature of Murder Bargains
Train had a single capital case before the court-in October 1848 - and he avoided trial with a plea - bargaining technique much like the one he used in liquor cases before the Court of Common Pleas. Barney Goulding stood charged with murdering his wife, Ellen, by beating her in the head. He pled nor guilty at his arraignment and claimed his right to a jury trial. Under a Massachusetts law that granted counsel to capital defendants, the court assigned two prominent members of the Middlesex bar to defend him-Theodore H. Sweetser and Benjamin F. Butler. Though Butler later earned fame as a Union general and governor of Massachusetts, he and his cocounsel apparently decided that in this case, the better part of valor was to plead their client out. The clerk recorded the result: “And afterward in this same term the said Barney Goulding, otherwise called Barnett Goulding, retracts his [not guilty] plea above pleaded, and says he is guilty of manslaughter. And Charles R. Train, Esquire, attorney for the Commonwealth in this behalf, says, he will no further prosecute this indictment as to the malice aforethought, and the charge of murder.” On his manslaughter conviction, the court sentenced Goulding to two years in the house of correction.
Had Goulding insisted on trial and been convicted of murder, he would have faced the mandatory penalty of death. The legislature did not divide murder into degrees until 1858, and until then all murder remained capital. Train's generosity in nol prossing the malice component of the murder indictment, hence reducing the charge to manslaughter, shrank Goulding possible sentence to between zero and twenty years. As I noted a moment ago, the judge sentenced Goulding near the bottom on that range.
[Fisher, 2004, pages 33 - 34]
