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The Minnesota Board of Pardons posthumously pardoned Max Mason today by unanimous vote.
Mason was accused of raping a white woman, Irene Tusken, in 1920. There was no evidence to support the allegations, and the Minnesota Historical Society said that a family doctor who examined her found no signs of rape or assault.
In the pardon hearing, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, “This particular application is critical to the name of Max Mason, but also critical to our state.”
The pardon has been decades in the making, according to Gov. Tim Walz. It was added to the agenda over six months ago.
“I don’t believe anything happens by chance,” Walz told the board. “I believe we’ve been given this opportunity, and I would ask my fellow members of the pardon board to think deeply on this and understand the implications involved with clearing Max Mason’s name.”
In a letter to Walz in January, several pardon board members pleaded for posthumous pardon and listed the reason why they believed the Board of Pardons should grant one.
The application is supported by Mike Tusken, a family member of Irene. Mike is the Chief of Police in Duluth, the city where this alleged rape and the arrest occurred.
“Not only is the conviction unjust, but the facts lack the basis for an arrest in the first place," Tusken said during the hearing.
He also said his aunt spent the last years of her life in a nursing home, suffering from the effects of a stroke and unable to “reconcile the facts or tone for her role in the lynching or wrongful conviction of Max Mason”.
“This is 100 years overdue,” Walz said. “The timing was for a reason. It was decades in the making.”
Some background: Three men who were arrested with Mason were beaten and lynched on the night of their arrests by an angry crowd on June 15, 1920.
The Minnesota National Guard later arrived and protected the three remaining suspects, including Mason.
The site of their deaths is now the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial. It's inscribed with the words of author Edmund Burke: "An event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to remain silent."
Mason was convicted with very little evidence and sentenced to about 30 years in prison. He was paroled in 1925, less than five years after his sentence began, on condition he leave the state.
Mason lived the rest of his life in Alabama before his death.