Was her real “crime” murder or marital infidelity? As this is the season for executive clemency, with former President Biden and current President Trump pardoning everyone in sight, it seems appropriate to raise a question that has been ignored for several centuries — whether Maine’s governor should grant a posthumous pardon to Katherine “Goodwife” Cornish.

Katherine has the dubious distinction of being the first person, and one of only two women, to have been sentenced to death after Maine was settled by Europeans.

Katherine’s sad story may be briefly recounted. Sometime in 1644, the body of Richard Cornish, Katherine’s husband, was discovered floating in the York River. According to an account written not long afterward, he was found with “his head bruised, and a pole sticking in his side, and his canoe laden with clay found sunk.” Suspicion fell upon Katherine, who had an admitted history of infidelity.

There being no real evidence against Katherine, the authorities turned to the medieval practice of “trial by touch,” which involved making the suspect touch the corpse; if it bled, that was taken as evidence of guilt. According to the account quoted above, when Katherine touched Richard’s body, it “oozed blood.”

Evidence pointing to Katherine’s innocence was ignored. Given the manner of Richard’s death, it is unlikely that Katherine possessed the strength to have weighed down Richard’s canoe, at least on her own, and no one was charged with her.

Even the existence of a motive is debatable. Katherine’s penchant for extramarital dalliances had become well-known during her 10-year marriage. There was nothing to indicate why in 1644 it might have led her to commit murder.

It should be acknowledged that the descendants of at least one participant in Katherine’s saga, Roger Garde, might object to a pardon. Garde had the dubious distinction of both presiding over Katherine’s trial and being identified by her as one of her amorous partners, an accusation he denied.

The ongoing impact of this matter is reflected in the fact that in 1965 two of Garde’s descendants, one a judge and the other a university professor, felt compelled to write the following in a family history: “The woman’s accusation, probably false, was believed by some persons, and the last years of Garde’s life were made intolerable by the slanderous statements of his enemies.” Although they assert that Garde was ultimately “exonerated of suspicion,” the evidence they invoke to support Garde’s denial is hardly conclusive.

The Garde controversy aside, there is no disputing the proposition that the only incriminating evidence against Katherine in the historical record was the patently meaningless “trial by touch.” While it may be impossible to prove Katherine’s innocence, that is not how our system works, and there was clearly inadequate evidence of guilt.

Even if Katherine were wrongly convicted, there is the question of whether the governor has the authority to pardon someone convicted in Maine before we became a state (although there is precedent in Maine for a posthumous pardon).

In this case, the murder occurred in what is now the town of York but was previously called Agamenticus, and in granting authority over Agamenticus to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the English Crown gave Gorges and his heirs the power to issue pardons. Since executive clemency thus resided with the governing authority in Maine and not the Crown, it makes sense to conclude that it passed to our governor when Maine achieved statehood.

The thornier question is whether pardoning Katherine would open for review all criminal convictions handed down in the past four centuries, or whether Katherine’s case is sufficiently unusual that it warrants consideration of executive clemency.

There is no doubt that Katherine has acquired an almost perverse celebrity status, frequently mentioned as the first person and only one of two women ever executed in Maine. As such, her unique notoriety is likely to last forever, especially given the salacious nature of her case.

Then there is the gender issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Katherine’s execution was the result of her engaging in conduct that has often been accepted, and sometimes even lauded when engaged in by males. If one shares this suspicion, there would be some symmetry in the first woman convicted of murder in Maine being pardoned by the state’s first female governor.