Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens Was Not Murdered

Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens Was Not Murdered 

The term murder often is used loosely. However, when it is displayed on a North Carolina historical marker, it should be used with appropriate legal and factual precision. Homicide is the killing of one person by another. Murder is a form of criminal homicide where the perpetrator intended to kill the other person, sometimes with premeditation (a plan to kill). Whether the homicide was "criminal" can only be determined in an appropriate legal proceeding. Since no such legal proceeding resulted with respect to the killing of Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens, he was not murdered.

In the case of John Walter (Chicken) Stephens, there undoubtedly was a homicide. A Caswell County coroner's court of inquiry so concluded in 1870. The jury found that Stephens "came to his death by strangulation caused by a small rope drawn around his neck in a noose and by three stabs with a pocket knife, the blade of which is about three and half inches long . . . done by the hands of some unknown person, or persons. . . ."

And, there are two "confessions" to the killing. The first was by Dr. Felix Roan on his death bed in 1891. The second was by John G. Lea, a written statement released after his death in 1935. However, neither of these "confessions" had any legal impact. While the two accounts differ as to the participants and the method of killing, both show that a group of men planned and carried out the killing of Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens in the Caswell County Courthouse. Several of the men purportedly associated with the killing were arrested and brought before a grand jury. However, no indictments resulted. None of the men were ever tried. None of the men ever submitted to a court a guilty plea. Thus, it is incorrect to say that Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens was murdered.

Some have objected to this analysis believing that it is an affront to the memory of Senator Stephens and in some way absolves the killers. To the contrary, using the word "murder" suggests that a court was involved and that some form of punishment was meted out, which is not the case. The killers suffered no adverse legal consequences. Some have objected to this analysis with the statement: "What difference does it make?" I believe the response to that kind of thinking is obvious. The facts and the law matter. It seems that the Ku Klux Klan planned to kill Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens, and that this plan was successfully implemented at the Caswell County Courthouse in May 1870. No person was tried for the killing. No person entered a guilty plea with respect to the killing.

Accordingly, while the facts overwhelmingly support a homicide, it is incorrect to say there was a murder.