SIGNATURE MONTANA | 47
A portion of an 1875 bird's eye map of Helena loosely depicts
Bullock's gallows and the fence around it at the rear of his new jail
(number 5 on the map) at Courthouse Square.
Sterres and Wheatley met their ends in the rear courtyard of
Bullock's jail, pictured here just before it was razed in 1890 to
make room for a new jail on the same site.
From territorial days to 1983, Montana law required that officials
conduct executions near the jail in the county where the crime
occurred. Sheriff Bullock had a scaffold built in the yard of the new
Lewis and Clark County jail he had just completed. e law also
required the presence of the sheriff, a physician, the county aorney
and at least "twelve reputable citizens." Sheriff Bullock sent invitations
as the law prescribed. e law also prohibited public viewing, so the
sheriff had a fence built around the scaffold.
irteen symbolic steps leading up to the scaffold's platform made
the gallows so tall that the fence could not shield it from public view.
Sheriff Bullock realized that nearby rooops would afford the public
ample viewing, and privacy was impossible to enforce, so he moved the
hour specified in the death warrant from midday to just past midnight.
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