Judge Isaac Parker was born in a log cabin in Belmont
County Ohio on October 15, 1838. His early accomplishes were:
·
At 17 he studied
law through self-study and apprenticeships.
·
At age of 21, he
passed the Ohio bar exam.
·
Then he went to St.
Joseph, Missouri to work for his uncle, D.E. Shannon, a partner in the Shannon
and Branch legal firm.
·
By 1861, he was
working on his own in both the municipal and county criminal courts.
·
In April, he won
the election as City Attorney and was then reelected for the next two years.
·
In 1864, Parker
ran for county prosecutor of the Ninth Missouri Judicial District.
·
In the fall of
1864, he served as a member of the Electoral College, casting his vote for
Abraham Lincoln.
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| Isaac Parker |
·
In 1868, Parker
sought and won a six-year term as judge of the Twelfth Missouri Circuit.
·
In 1870, he won a
seat in Congress for the Seventh Congressional District.
·
In November 1872,
he easily won a second term and gained national attention for speeches
delivered in support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In 1874, the political tide shifted in Missouri, and
Republican Congressmen, like Isaac Parker, didn’t have a chance of reelection
to Congress. So, he decided to attain a presidential appointment to public
office and he asked to serve as the judge of the federal district court for the
Western District of Arkansas, in Fort Smith. On March 18, 1875, President Grant
nominated Parker as judge for the Western District of Arkansas.
Fort Smith’s U.S. Court for the
Western District of Arkansas,
The only court with jurisdiction
over the Indian Territory was the U.S. Court for the
Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith. So, after the Civil War, numerous outlaws took
refuge in that lawless land and terror reigned.
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| Fort Smith |
Hanging Judge
Parker arrived in Fort Smith on May 4, 1875. At age 36, he
was the youngest Federal judge in the West. He held court six days a week, up
to ten hours a day, and in his first eight weeks on the bench he tried 91 men.
In his first summer there, of the eighteen-people charged with murder in his
court, 15 were convicted, and eight of them were sentenced to death by hanging on
September 3, 1875. But, only six were executed that day because one was killed when
he tried to escape and another one had his sentence commuted to life in prison
because he was so young.
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| Judge Isaac Parker |
The hanging of the six felons was a
huge media event. Reporters from Little Rock, St. Louis, Kansas City, and big
eastern cities came to cover the story. Over 5,000 people watched the hangings.
Parker was soon known as the “Hanging Judge” of the
“Court of the Damned.” But local folks agreed with Parker’s rulings and were
glad justice was finally dispensed in the previous lawless territory. Most of
them felt the savagery of the crimes warranted a trip to the gallows. Parker
would have 73 other men hung before his death in 1896. He tried 13,490 cases in
all, 344 were capital crimes, and 9,454 resulted in guilty pleas or convictions.
Philosophy
Parker actually believed in the abolition of the death
penalty, but he took his duty and obligation to uphold the law seriously.
However, even though Parker came down hard on rapists and murderers, he was a just
man, who even granted retrials that sometimes resulted in acquittals or reduced
sentences. At one time he said, “in the uncertainty of punishment following
crime, lies the weakness of our halting justice.”
However, Parker reserved most of his sympathy for the innocent
victims of crime and was one of the first people to advocate for victim’s
rights.
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| Parker's courtroom reconstructed at Fort Smith |
Famous Men He Sent
to The Gallows
Some of the more notorious men Judge Parker sentenced to
hanging included:
William Elliott, alias Colorado Bill, a gunslinger, who
was suspected of murders in four different states, was hanged for one murder on
August 29, 1879.
James Watson, who was executed April 23, 1886, for the
1872 murder of a man named Henry Martin. Watson had eluded capture until 1884,
at which time a large reward was offered for his arrest in connection with the
murder of Almarine Watkins. He was convicted for that crime.
John Stansberry was hung for murdering his wife. Although
he and his wife had a new baby, Stansberry fell in love with another woman. He
decided to sever all ties to his wife and child by killing them. He murdered
his child on September 20, 1889, and he killed his wife with an ax about a
month later. Stansberry was arrested at his wife's grave after the funeral and
was convicted shortly thereafter. He was hung on July 9, 1890.
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| Rufus Buck Gang |
The Rufus Buck Gang were five teenaged boys, who terrified
the white settlers, the native Americans, and the African American freemen in
the area when they went on a vicious thirteen-day crime spree of robbery, rape,
and murder. The gang’s leader, Rufus Buck, the 18-year-old son of a black
mother and Creek father, planned that the violent spree would trigger an Indian
uprising to run off the white settlers, so he could reclaim the whole Territory
for Native Americans. They killed Deputy Marshal John Garrett, and at least one
other person, wounded several others, robbed everyone who crossed their path,
and raped several women.
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| Rufus Buck |
They were finally caught after a seven-hour shootout.
Five members of the Rufus Buck Gang: Rufus Buck, Lewis and Lucky Davis, Creek
freedmen, and Sam Sampson and Maoma July, Creek Indians, were hung for raping Rosetta
Hansen. They were the only men to hang in Fort Smith for rape. This was one of
the largest mass executions for rape in U.S. history.
Eventually, the days of the wild Indian Territory and
hanging judges came to a close. In 1895 a new Courts Act was passed which
removed the last remaining Indian Territory jurisdiction effective September 1,
1896.
Fletcher’s Pride, my latest book in the MacLarens of
Boundary Mountain series is available in eBook and paperback.
You may buy
Fletcher’s Pride directly from
Shirleen at:
This is about the most complete short portrait I've read on Judge Parker. Thank you, Shirleen. The cover for you new book is vibrant!
ReplyDeleteExcellent overview of a man whose story is even more exciting than the many versions people like to tell. Thank you. Doris
ReplyDelete