John Edmonds, who served as a judge on New York State’s highest court of law, considered punishment policy from a spiritualist perspective. In a public lecture given in 1860, Edmonds criticized a text from Washington Irving’s Sketchbook that examined grief by describing grave decorations.^ Edmonds considered this text to illustrate “popular theology.” Edmonds himself favored a more direct approach to examining the effects of a death sentence:

When himself administering the government, and before he had received the light of spiritualism, the plea of death as a punishment appeared to him absurd. How could we know that death would be the ultimate punishment? Since his reception of the light of spiritualism, he had received confirmation of his thoughts. He condemned nearly a score of persons to death in the course of his judicial career, and he had been visited by two who were executed in pursuance of that sentence. He had learned, to his satisfaction, at least what was the effect of the penalty of death.

Edmonds reported that one of the spirits of the executed had come to him “full of hatred and revenge.” Edmonds told the spirit, “You suffered in consequence of the crime that you had committed, but the spirit replied, “No matter. I was not prepared to leave life – I enjoyed it, and I hate you.” In contrast, the other spirit volunteered that he had in life acquired bad habits, fallen into temptation, and killed a man. That spirit thanked Edmonds:

You have carried me beyond the reach of temptation by the execution that you condemned me to. You improved my condition. I thank you for taking my life.^

Edmonds argued that “governments and priests” had fostered fear of death as “an instrument of power” and “an instrument of mental subjugation.” Edmonds favored humane, reformative imprisonment over the death penalty.^ Spiritual communication provided Edmonds with knowledge he considered useful for rational, consequential analysis of punishment practices.