Darrow agreed to defend the McNamaras—in what was his first major case after the Idaho trials—but before the trial even started, he discovered that they were guilty and realized that he had not the slightest chance of winning.18 During jury selection two jurors were approached with bribes to vote for acquittal. When the alleged middleman was caught in a sting operation, Darrow was charged with two counts of bribery and prosecuted in separate trials. In the first he was found not guilty, but the second ended with a hung jury that had voted 8–4 for conviction. Darrow’s shining reputation has long obscured the fact that most of the trial reporters as well as many colleagues and friends were convinced that he was guilty. In an authoritative and exhaustive study, Geoffrey Cowan concluded: “On the basis, then, of all of the available evidence, it is fair to conclude that Darrow bribed both Lockwood and Bain.”19
Such an assessment makes it reasonable to assume that Darrow had bribed Lillard in 1906, and in so doing, had swung the momentum back in favor of the defense.
• • •
Early in Adams’s confinement in Wallace, McParland visited him in the hope of winning him back. Afterward, McParland recorded that, “He told me he did not want to talk; he had his mind made up and there was no further use in me calling upon him as he realized what he was doing. . . . [H]e did not want to see anybody but his lawyer and his people in the future, from which it will be seen that he is wholly in the power of his lawyer, wife and uncle.”20
That being the case, on Monday, September 24—six days after Adams arrived in Wallace—a preliminary hearing on the murder of Tyler began. Hoping to gain information about Orchard’s confession, Darrow looked forward to cross-examining McParland, but to save its thunder, the prosecution chose not to call him to the stand, relying instead on Thiele—who had recently been promoted to assistant superintendent in Spokane.21 McParland was in attendance nevertheless and noted: “Owing to the long drawn cross examination of the witnesses by Darrow, the proceedings were very slow, and it would appear as if he was trying to kill time or make a showing for his fees.”22
Presiding judge Boomer had a different view. At the hearing’s conclusion he informed McParland “that he could see through the way that Darrow cross-examined Asst Supt Thiele that his main object was to discover what evidence the State had against Moyer, Heywood [sic], and Pettibone, and as he, Judge Boomer, did not want this case to be a medium through which the defense would get information, . . . he over ruled all questions asked by Mr Darrow on that line.”23
On September 29, Adams was bound over for trial, but in the next fortnight, labor supporters finally had a major triumph. Back in March, St. John had been brought to Colorado on a charge of conspiracy to murder Ben Burnham. After being denied bail, a change of venue, and a request for the local magistrate to recuse himself, St. John was committed to trial in Telluride.24 In the following months, Orrin N. Hilton, a former judge turned WFM attorney, obtained a change of venue to the Mesa County District Court in Grand Junction, and then managed to get six of the eight counts against St. John quashed.25 When the case finally went to court, Judge Theron Stevens dismissed all charges when “District Attorney Selig announced that the State had not secured evidence to convict him.”26
St. John was but a sidelight, however, compared to the events across the country the following week, when Hawley, Borah, Richardson, and Darrow appeared in the same courtroom for the first time to argue the habeas corpus petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court. The arguments were necessarily similar to those made before the state and circuit courts, and on December 3 they heard that the decision they’d been waiting almost two months for would prove the same as well. Effectively combining the appeals from the two court systems into one, the Supreme Court affirmed the decisions of the Circuit Court (and therefore the Idaho Supreme Court) by a 7 to 1 vote.27
The key elements of the decision were three lower-court rulings that were upheld. The first was that Governor McDonald had not infringed any rights by accepting the extradition papers at face value, without demanding further proof that Pettibone (the petitioner in the case ruled upon) was a fugitive from justice. This proof was in theory provided under the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit clause, which effectively stated that McDonald had reason to trust official documents from another state. The second issue addressed the speed with which the men had been removed from Colorado and if it denied them the right to a legal means to challenge their deportation. The Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that the Constitution did not guarantee the petitioner the right to be arrested and extradited in such a way as to provide a convenient opportunity to test whether the extradition was legal.
The most contentious point in the ruling related to whether the men should be released on habeas corpus if the methods by which their presence in the state had been secured were themselves illegal or had violated their rights. Or, as Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in the decision: “As the petitioner is within the jurisdiction of Idaho, and is held by its authorities for trial, are the particular methods by which he was brought within her limits at all material in the proceeding by habeas corpus?”28 Basing their decision to a great extent on two previous Supreme Court rulings—Ker v. Illinois and Mahon v. Justice29—the Court ruled that such considerations were not material, once again supporting the lower courts’ decisions. In summation, it stated:
Even were it conceded, for the purposes of this case, that the governor of Idaho wrongfully issued his requisition, and that the governor of Colorado erred in honoring it and in issuing his warrant of arrest, the vital fact remains that Pettibone is held by Idaho in actual custody for trial under an indictment charging him with crime against its laws, and he seeks the aid of the circuit court to relieve him from custody, so that he may leave that state and thereby defeat the prosecution against him without a trial. In the present case it is not necessary to go behind the indictment and inquire as to how it happened that he came within reach of the process of the Idaho court in which the indictment is pending.30
The decision received widespread condemnation from socialist and labor critics, who by sheer repetition, made famous one line from the dissent by Justice Joseph McKenna: “Kidnapping is a crime, pure and simple.”31 Regardless of reaction to the ruling, it established a precedent that has been followed ever since by state and federal courts, and even, on occasion, international courts.32 Moreover, it remanded the three prisoners to the Canyon County authorities, who were now able to proceed with the trial.
McParland’s return to poor health did not receive such publicity. “I was stricken down with rheumatism in my left leg and ankle on Nov 7th,” he wrote to Bangs, continuing, “and was in a very precarious condition. . . . The ankle and leg up to the knee swelled to such an extent that all the smaller blood vessels under the skin broke. . . . I could not under any circumstances allow my foot to touch the floor or in fact did it go within twelve inches of the floor for over two weeks.” Equally unpleasantly, McParland suffered severe headaches, high fevers, and “During my sickness I think I must have lost at least twenty to twenty-five pounds.”33 Moreover, he worried about his wife, who was also suffering badly from rheumatism: “you can imagine the condition we were placed in at our house, my wife lying in one bed and I in another.”34
Robert Pinkerton was solicitous and concerned: “You have a very trying time before you in connection with the trials in Idaho,” he wrote, “and I am aware that you would have to be in the best of health to contend against the forces that you will find arrayed against you.”35 Even from afar, Pinkerton had hit the mark about the brutal confrontation that lay ahead.
• • •
One year after the assassination of Frank Steunenberg the strategy of the prosecution shifted to convicting Adams of the murder of Fred Tyler in the backwoods of northern Idaho. This would allow the State to hold out the promise of a pardon or commutation in exchange for his testimony against the inner circle.
However, when jury selection began in Wallace on February 11, both Richardson and Darrow were there, and Richardson would serve as the primary counsel throughout the trial. Meanwhile, Hawley was joined by special prosecutor Henry P. Knight, with assistance from the recently elected Shoshone County prosecutor Walter H. Hanson and the county’s former prosecutor, James E. Gyde. Thus, of the major legal figures, only Borah, who on January 15 had been elected to the U.S. Senate, was not available.37
To McParland’s chagrin, he was not there for jury selection either. Two days before, he, Siringo‚ Whitney, and the detective’s new stenographer, Robert Shollenberger, left Boise for Wallace.38 It transpired to be an unusually long and frustrating journey, as heavy snow, thick ice, washed-out tracks, and freight wrecks delayed them at every turn. With some tracks closed for up to ten days, they were forced to take an old cargo boat up the Columbia River to Portland, followed by a nightmarish, thirty-nine-hour train ride to Spokane. They finally reached Wallace after having been en route just short of five days for what normally would have taken less than one.
If the journey were not hellish enough, there were problems with the accommodation. McParland had asked Sutherland—recently replaced as sheriff—to book rooms for his party, as Wallace did not have much in the way of lodging.39 When he arrived, McParland had a room, but, he wrote unhappily to Bangs, it was only “8 x 8 without any stove or heat. . . . For a place like Wallace, the county seat with some of the greatest mines on earth surrounding the town, it is a wonder to me that somebody does not build a hotel and start a dining room wherein a man could get a decent meal. . . . There is one restaurant in town and that is run just as the restaurant keeper pleases, and you must take whatever you get.”40
McParland’s mood did not improve when he discovered what had happened in court. In an area dominated by the mining industry, many potential jurors were “either members of the Western Federation or sympathizers,” and the prosecution had quickly used up its peremptory challenges. Thus, he told Bangs, there were at best “nine good jurors, two very doubtful, and one we are sure will never fetch in a verdict of guilty as he is a brother-in-law of the notorious Paul Corcoran who led the attack on the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mine and mill in ’99.”41
Testimony began on Saturday, February 16, with Chris Thiele’s account of a confession Adams had made to him in Whitney’s office the previous April.42 In 1904, Adams had accompanied Jack Simpkins to the latter’s claim in a wild part of northern Idaho, “up on the St Joe River, above the head of navigation about fourteen miles.” Once there, Simpkins offered Adams three hundred dollars to eliminate several claim jumpers who had built cabins in a heavily timbered area and were “trying to take these settlers’ claims away.” Adams met two rough customers—Alva Mason and Newt “Wall-Eye” Glover—who were also incensed about people without proper claims, so they decided to kill thirty-four-year-old Fred Tyler, who had moved there that spring from Michigan. Since they were so far out in the woods, they figured no one would ever know.
In August 1904, Adams, Mason, and Glover went to Tyler’s place. After lying in wait until dusk, Adams ambushed Tyler. With a Winchester .25-35 pointed at him, the three “disarmed him, took him to Simpkins’ cabin, stopped there until morning, had breakfast there, took him three miles out into the timber the next morning, and I killed him.” Adams left the body between two logs and reported to Simpkins. Two weeks later they returned and killed Ed Boule. Tyler’s body was discovered and identified a year later, and the skull was offered in evidence, with “a big bullet hole back of the left ear.”43 For most of the trial it grinned at the jury from the front of the prosecutor’s table.
On the fourth day of testimony, a shabby man with long dark hair and a stubby beard suddenly stood up and proclaimed: “It is the heart that moves the hand. I am the man who killed Fred Tyler. Turn all these other fellows loose, for I am the man that done the deed.”44 In the commotion that followed, Annie Adams burst into tears, and the man—Patrick Ryan of Butte, Montana—was taken into custody. Questioned, Ryan admitted he had just finished a term in Deer Lodge penitentiary for stealing mutton. He had gone to Burke, where, he said, President Roosevelt’s daughter told him to take charge of the case, because if Adams were convicted an earthquake would destroy the Coeur d’Alenes. Within days he was placed in a lunatic asylum.
That afternoon, McParland took the stand, with Richardson trying to prove that he had “obtained a confession from Adams through threats, promises and cajolery.” Richardson’s questions “being absolutely false,” McParland noted, “my principal answer was in the negative.”45 Or, according to the Associated Press, McParland “denied that he had agreed with Governor Gooding and Warden Whitney to subject Adams to five or six days solitary confinement, that at the end of that time he would be ready to ‘cough it all up’ . . . denied that he had administered what is known as the ‘third degree’ to Adams . . . denied that he had made any arrangements by which Adams and Orchard should be locked together . . . denied that threats had been used or inducements held out, but designated the whole transaction as a ‘business proposition.’”46
The next day McParland was back on the stand, with the defense “striving hard to prove that this confession was made under duress and that Adams was coerced by threats if he did not confess and bribed by promises of leniency and special favors if he told the story the officers desired.”47
One thing Richardson particularly wanted to force McParland to admit to was the unsavory conditions in which Adams—and, looking ahead to later trials, Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone—was kept in the penitentiary. However, McParland reported that, having “anticipated . . . I would be examined very closely in the matter . . . I never entered the penitentiary gate, contenting myself with never going farther than the Warden’s office.”48
Indeed, if Richardson were hoping to break someone down, McParland was the wrong target, and his methods were generally ineffective, according to the detective: “Richardson adopts a rather peculiar method of propounding questions. He propounds at least a half dozen separate questions in one. If a witness would answer the question as a whole by either yes or no, it would place him in an embarrassing position, therefore I adopted the plan of answering each question separately as though it had been propounded to me separately.”49
At one point, having failed to force McParland to admit to any wrongdoing in obtaining the confession, Richardson pointedly asked, “You are an old hand at this kind of work, are you not?” To which McParland shot back, “I know my business.”50 Finally, “Richardson asked me if when questioning Adams I did not lead Adams in the manner that he had been trying to lead me during examination of me to which I replied not in that way as I did not assume the stagey dramatic air in talking with Adams that Mr Richardson had assumed in talking with me for the benefit of the galleries.”
The mutual testiness continued even after McParland was excused.51 Richardson had referred several times to McParland’s work in Parsons, Kansas, which the detective had simply brushed off. As he was leaving the witness stand, Richardson said: “I have the affidavits relative to the Parsons, Kansas, affair.”
McParland retorted: “From what I know of you you can get affidavits on anything but the time will come when you will have to produce them and the parties who made them.”
A bit taken aback, Richardson said he did not want an altercation with McParland, who promptly spat back, “I didn’t think so.”
“I am no
t afraid of you,” Richardson said, to which McParland responded, “Well that is the way I feel in regard to you.”
The next day, the Associated Press report—picked up via The Spokesman-Review of Spokane—stated: “This caused a scene in court. The spectators cheered Richardson and hissed McPartland.”52 This quote—later used to suggest a negative general feeling about the detective53—did not fairly represent the situation. A few days later, a young reporter for The Spokesman-Review apologized to McParland, stating he had left court early, and the comment had been added to his story by another newspaperman, who had since been discharged due to its inaccuracy. A disgusted McParland reported, “There is no doubt [the other journalist] was paid but just how much he got I don’t know. However, it has been given to the public and the old saying is a lie travels with lightening [sic] speed but the truth travels like a turtle. While I am well aware that the defense would resort to nearly all manner of dirt, I did not hardly expect they would resort to a low trick as this. I am not at all disconcerted about this matter, but merely wish to draw your attention to what we may expect during the trials of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone.”54
Soon thereafter, McParland was called back to the stand to produce Adams’s confession, the relevant parts of which were introduced into evidence.55 The judge told the jury that they could decide whether it had been given freely and voluntarily. McParland again faced off with Richardson, who, “for the last hour of my cross-examination . . . either seemed to be out of ammunition or nonplussed as to what to ask me and looked appealingly from time to time to Darrow to prompt him.”56
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