1925: (top to bottom) Frank Dove, George Williams, Fred Dove. These three men were convicted of the August 1922 murder of mail carrier Cyrus Jones in Swansboro, N.C., largely on the testimony of another man, Willie Hardison, who was tried separately for the murder. Hardison later confessed that he had made up their involvement, under the threat of being lynched. Hardison was electrocuted by the state in 1923. Letters requesting executive clemency for Williams and the Dove brothers were written by both the trial judge and the prosecutor who had convicted them. After almost six years on death row, the three were given full pardons in March 1928 by Governor A.W. McLean.
(Image from "Capital Punishment in North Carolina," Special Bulletin from the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, Raleigh, N.C. (1929); Copy courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
