Garroter Shunned By His Countrymen

Hated and despised by his fellow countrymen. Vincento Mazario Rivera is in an incredible predicament in Porto Rico. He is hounded so that it is difficult for him to get food to keep him from starvation.

Five months ago Rivera, serving a fourteen year sentence in San Juan jail, yielded to the promise of Governor Hunt of Porto Rico and obtained a pardon by executing nine murderers who had been condemned to death.

Since then Rivera has been free, but it has been the freedom of starvation. He has been acquitted by the law and condemned by his fellow men.

No words can describe the horrence which Porto Ricans feel for a public I ecutioner On both humane and superstitious grounds they are averse I to inflicting the death penalty.

No native carpenter will build I a scaffold or platform on which the victims are to be placed. No merchant will sell Iumber or nails for such a purpose. No mechanic will repair a garroting machine. Had it not been for the active supervision of Marshal Bothwell of the supreme court the executions at which Rivera officiated could not have taken place.

This intense aversion to garroting and to the man who performs it is not justified by any peculiar brutality in he act itself. Captain Griffith of the United States army expressed it as his opinion after seeing Rivera put the last four prisoners to death that the process was even quicker and less painful than hanging. According to the old Spanish custom in Porto Rico, the doomed man in a placed in a chair, with hands tied to his sides, feet fastened below and the black cap over his head. The deadly clutch of the garroting machine's iron fingers is then arranged at his neck, so that with one swift, powerful turn of the handle the victim's neck is broken.

The body is sometimes seen to puff slightly, the hands twitch, and without a groan the life is reft from the body. As far as the consciousness of the victim is concerned death is painless and instantaneous.

The bodies, with the heads exposed and still tied to the posts, are then left open to view for four hours, according to a long established custom, when they are taken down and buried in the Jail yard.