Friday, July 31, 1885
MR JUSTICE RICHARDSON: Louis Riel, after a long consideration of your case, in which you have been defended with as great ability as I think counsel could have defended you with, you have been found by a jury who have shown, I might almost say, unexampled patience, guilty of a crime the most pernicious and greatest that man can commit. You have been found guilty of high treason. You have been proved to have let loose the flood gates of repine and bloodshed, you have with such assistance as you had in the Saskatchewan country, managed to around the Indians and have brought ruin and misery to many families whom if you had simply left alone were in comfort, and many of them were on the road to affluence.
For what you did, the remarks you have made form no excuse whatever. For what you have done the law requires you to answer. It is true that the jury in merciful consideration have asked Her Majesty to give your case such merciful consideration as she can bestow upon it. I had almost forgotten that those who are defending you have placed in my hands a notice that the objection which they raised at the opening of the court must not be forgotten from the record, in order that if they see fit they may raise the question in the proper place. That has been done. But in spite of that, I cannot hold out any hope to you that you will succeed in getting entirely free, or that Her Majesty will, after what you have been the cause of doing, open her had of clemency to you.
For me, I have only one more duty to perform, that is, to tell you what the sentence of the law is upon you. I have , as I must given time to enable your case to be heard. All I can suggest or advise you is to prepare to meet your end, that is all the advice or suggestion I can offer. It is not my painful duty to pass the sentence of the court upon you, and that is, that you be taken now from here to the police guard-room at Regina, which is the goal and the place from whence you came, and that you be kept there till the 18th of September next, that on the 18th of September next you be taken to the place appointed for you execution, and there be hanged by the next till you are dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.