Youth Prefers Firing Squad to Return to State Pen

R. J. Watson Takes Poison Second Time

Ex-Soldier Despondent Over Plight; Says He Killed Man in Self-Defense

ON LEAVE OF ABSENCE

Did Not Know Pardon Board Had Recommended That He Be Freed

BY CLYDE WEBSTER

“I had rather face a firing squad than go back to the state penitentiary,” Robert J. “Willie” Watson, who has twice tried to kill himself within the past two weeks with poison, declared hopelessly from his bed in the Baptist hospital today.

Watson, handsome young man of 28, has served two years of a ten-year sentence for killing a man near Charleston in 1928, and is recuperating from a dose of poison self-administered yesterday afternoon.

On a leave of absence from the “pen” and schedule to return Thursday Watson took three bichloride of mercury tablets on the street in Columbia yesterday after leaving the home of his parents in Blaney where he has been recuperating from a similar attempt two weeks ago, when his leave was up. After the poisoning, relatives secured an extension of leave. At the end of the extension he made a second attempt on his life.

Not Guilty.

“If I was guilty I wouldn’t mind,” Watson said, “yes I would mind too, but it wouldn’t be as bad as to have to stay in that place for something that I couldn’t help.”

“I pleaded guilty at the trial, if ever a man told the truth I told it.

“It was an old grudge; I shot him in self-defense. He shot at me twice before I shot.

“No, I don’t think I will have to serve the rest of the time, this will do me up,” he continued hopelessly.

Watson was carried to the hospital Monday afternoon. Physicians pumped the poison from his stomach and he is apparently on the road to recovery.

“Yes, if I get over this I will face it and not try the poison again,” Watson said.

Watson faces nearly eight years of a 10-year and one day sentence for manslaughter. He was convicted in Charleston in a spectacular case in which Abram H. Afong, son of wealthy Hawaiian planter, also figured.

Convict Prefers Bullets to Pen

R. J. Watson Makes Second Futile Attempt to Take His Own Life

Charges of murder confronted the two for the killing of Earle R. Fetter in the sand dunes of the Isle of Palms, near Charleston, December 25, 1928.

Assumes Blame.

Though the prosecution branded Afong as the mastermind, Waston assumed blame at the trial. He urged self defense and received a 10-year and one day sentence. Afong was acquitted.

All three men were soldiers. A court martial found Afong guilty of desertion and other charges, and gave him 15 months which he completed in 1930.

The board of pardons of the state of South Carolina recommended a pardon for Watson in April, 1930, on the grounds that the penalty was too heavy for the offense Charles Gerald, secretary to the governor, state yesterday. The recommendation is awaiting action of the governor.

Told as he lay on his bed in the hospital that he would probably be pardoned soon, Watson received the news hopelessly as usual saying, “Oh, they will probably never get to it.”