Isaac Parker

Isaac Charles Parker
Painting of Judge Isaac Parker, circa 1896.
U.S. District Judge presiding over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas
In office March 19, 1875 – November 25, 1896[1]
Nominated by	Ulysses S. Grant
Preceded by	William Story
Succeeded by	John Henry Rogers
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri's 7th district
In office March 4, 1871 – March 4, 1875
Preceded by	Joel Funk Asper
Succeeded by	Thomas Theodore Crittenden
Judge of the 12th Missouri Circuit Court
In office 1868–1870
Personal details
Born	(1838-10-15)October 15, 1838 Barnesville, Ohio, United States
Died	November 17, 1896(1896-11-17) (aged 58) Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States
Spouse(s)	Mary O'Toole

Isaac Charles Parker (October 15, 1838 – November 17, 1896) was a United States Congressman for Missouri and a jurist, who presided over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas for twenty-one years. He served in as a judge during western expansion of the United States and is known as "Hanging Judge" of the American Old West.^[2] He also served as a Congressman for Missouri's 7th District.

In twenty-one years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases and more than 8,500 either plead guilty or were convicted at trial.^[3] Parker sentenced 160 people to death, 79 were executed, the others died while incarcerated, were acquitted pardoned or their sentence was commuted.^[4][5]

Early life

Parker was the youngest son of Joseph Parker and his wife Jane Shannon, and the great-nephew of Ohio Governor Wilson Shannon. He was raised on the family farm near Barnesville, Ohio. He attended Breeze Hill Primary School, followed by the Barnesville Classical Institute, a private school. He taught in a county primary school to pay for his secondary education.^[6][7]

When he was 17, Parker decided to become a lawyer. He combined an apprenticeship with a local lawyer with his own self studies. He passed the bar exam in 1859.^[7]

Marriage and family

On December 12, 1861, while living in St. Joseph, Missouri, Parker married local woman Mary O'Toole, they had two sons, Charles and James.^[8]

Early career

Upon passing the Ohio bar exam at 21 years of age (in 1859), Parker travelled to St. Joseph, Missouri. Parker began his legal career at the Shannon and Branch law firm in which his maternal uncle, D.E. Shannon, was a partner.^[8][9]

Parker had started his own law firm by 1861 working in the municipal and country courts.^[7][9]

Political career

Attorney and prosecutor

Photo of Isaac Parker taken between 1860 and 1865.

In April 1861, Parker won election as the city attorney for St. Joseph as a Democrat. The American Civil War broke out four days after Parker took office and he enlisted in a pro-Union home guard unit, the 61st Missouri Emergency Regiment reaching the rank of corporal. City attorney was a part-time position with a one-year term, Parker was re-elected during 1862 and 1863.^[9]

Split from Democratic Party

In 1864, Parker formally split from the Democratic Party over conflicting opinions on slavery.^[10] He ran as a Republican 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.^[11]

State circuit judge

In 1868, Parker won a six-year term as judge of the Twelfth Missouri Circuit.^[11]

Parker was nominated as the Republican candidate for Missouri's 7th congressional district^[12] on September 13, 1870. Backed by the Radical faction of the Republican party, Parker resigned his judgeship and devoted his energy to the campaign.^[6] Parker's opponent withdrew from the election two weeks prior to the election.^[13]

Election to Congress

The first session of the Forty-second Congress convened on March 4, 1871. During his first term Parker assisted veterans of his district in securing pensions and lobbied for the construction of a new federal building in St. Joseph. He sponsored a failed bill designed to enfranchise women and allow them to hold public office in United States territories. Parker also sponsored legislation to organize the Indian Territory under a territorial government.^[11]

Parker sought election in Missouri's 7th congressional district and won a seat in the Forty-third Congress.^[12] A local paper wrote of him, "Missouri had no more trusted or influential representative in ... Congress during the past two years ..."^[14] In his second term, Parker concentrated on Indian policy including the fair treatment of the Tribes residing in the Indian Territory. Speeches he made in support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs gained national attention.^[15]

In 1874, Parker was the caucus nominee of the Republican Party for a Missouri Senate seat.^[6] However the political tide had shifted in Missouri which made it unlikely that Parker would be re-elected so he sought a presidential appointment as the judge for the Western District of Arkansas.^[7][11]

District Judge

On May 26, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Parker as Chief Justice, Utah Territory to replace Chief Justice James B. McKean. However, following a request from Parker, Grant instead nominated him for the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.^[16][17] Parker replaced William Story who was facing impeachment proceedings due to allegations of corruption.^[13][18]

Parker arrived in Fort Smith on May 4, 1875, initially without his family. His appointment at age 36 made him the youngest Federal judge in the West.^[7] Parker held court for the first time on May 10, 1875 with court prosecutor W. H. H. Clayton, who remained the United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas for fourteen of Parker's twenty-one years on the court.^[19]

Photo of Parker's courtroom reconstructed at the Fort Smith National Historic Site taken in 1966.

In the first term of court, Parker tried eighteen men who were charged with murder; fifteen were convicted in jury trials. Parker sentenced eight of them to a mandatory death after being convicted of murder.^[7] Eight of these men were sentenced on Parker's first court session in May 1875.^[13] Parker ordered six of the men to be executed at the same time on September 3, 1875.^[8] One of those sentenced to death was killed trying to escape, and another's sentence was commuted to life in prison because of his youth.^[7]

The Western District court had final jurisdiction over the Indian Territory as, from 1875 until 1889, there was no court of appeal available for appeals of Indian Territory cases.^[20][21]

Parker was the judge in the "Oklahoma Boomer" case involving David L. Payne who illegally settled on lands in the Indian Territory.^[22]

In an interview Parker gave to the St. Louis Republic on September 1, 1896 he stated that he had no say whether a convict was to be hanged and that he favoured "the abolition of capital punishment".^[23][24]

The changing court

According to Congress, the federal court for the Western District of Arkansas was to meet in four separate terms each year; in February, May, August, and November. The court had such a large case load that the four terms ran together. To ensure that the court tried as many cases as possible each term, Judge Parker held court six days a week, and often up to ten hours each day.^[7][8]

In 1883, Congress reduced the jurisdiction of the court, reassigning portions of the Indian Territory to federal courts in Texas and Kansas.^[25] The increasing number of settlers moving into the Indian Territories resulted in the number of cases before Parker increasing.^[8]

From May 1, 1889 changes made by Congress allowed appeals of capital convictions to the United States Supreme Court.^[26][27] Forty-four cases where Parker imposed the death penalty were appealed to the Supreme Court which overturned and ordered a re-trial for thirty of them.^[8][28][29]

Community involvement

While serving as a District Judge in Fort Smith, Parker served on the Fort Smith School Board and was the first president of St. John's Hospital (known today as Sparks Health System).^[30][31][32]

Later years

Keeping up with continued settlement in the West, the Courts Act of 1889 established a federal court system in the Indian Territory; this decreased the jurisdiction of the Western District Court at Fort Smith.^[23]

Parker clashed with the Supreme Court on a number of occasions with around two-thirds of cases appealed to the Supreme Court being upheld.^[20][21] In 1894, the judge gained national attention in a dispute with the Supreme Court over the case of Lafayette Hudson.^[33] Hudson was convicted of assault with intent to kill and sentenced to four year imprisonment, he appealed to the Supreme Court and was granted bail. Parker refused to release Hudson on the grounds that statute law did not provide the Supreme Court to authority to demand Hudson's release.^[34][35]

In 1895 Judge Parker heard two cases involving Crawford Goldsby (Cherokee Bill). The first involved Goldsby killing a bystander during a general store robbery in 1894. In a case which lasted from February 26, 1895 to June 25, 1895 he was convicted and Parker sentenced him to death. However while awaiting execution, Goldsby attempted to escape prison and killed a prison guard. He was again brought before Parker who sentenced him to a second death sentence on December 2, 1895. Goldsby was eventually hanged on March 17, 1896.^[36]

Present day image of the reconstructed gallows now located at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.

In 1895, Congress passed a new Courts Act, which removed the remaining Indian Territory jurisdiction of the Western District, effective September 1, 1896.

Sickness and death

When the August term of 1896 began, Judge Parker was at home, too sick to preside over the court. He suffered from Bright's Disease. When the jurisdiction of the court over lands in the Indian Territory came to an end on September 1, 1896, reporters wanted to interview him about his career and had to talk to Parker at his bedside.^[23]

Parker died on November 17, 1896 of a number of health conditions including heart degeneration and Bright's Disease.^[8] Parker's funeral in Fort Smith had the most number of attendees up to that point.^[37] He is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery.^[38]

In twenty-one years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases and more than 8,500 either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial.^[3] Parker sentenced 160 people to death, 79 were executed, the others died while incarcerated, were acquitted pardoned or their sentence was commuted.^[4][5]

Representation in media

Judge Parker is featured prominently along with Bass Reeves in the historical fiction novel, "The Nations" by Ken Farmer and Buck Stienke.

• Pierre Watkin played Judge Parker in a 1955 episode, "Cherokee Bill" of the syndicated television series Stories of the Century, starring and narrated by Jim Davis.^[39][40]
• Thomas Browne Henry (1907–1980) portrayed Parker in the 1960 film Oklahoma Territory, with Bill Williams cast as Temple Houston.^[41][42]
• Charles Portis features Judge Parker in his novel, True Grit, which has twice been adapted as films of the same name. Parker is a featured character in the sequel to the first film. Parker was portrayed by James Westerfield in the 1969 movie and by John McIntire in the sequel. He was played by Jake Walker in the 2010 remake of True Grit.^[43]
• The character played by Pat Hingle in Hang 'Em High has a different name and operates out of a fictional Fort Grant, but the figure has many of the characteristics of Judge Parker.^[44]
• Larry McMurtry's 1997 novel Zeke and Ned tells the story of Zeke Proctor, one of Parker's deputy marshals.^[45]
• Loren D. Estleman's 2009 novel The Branch and The Scaffold is a novel fictionalizing Parker's tenure at Fort Smith. Moreover, in Estleman's series of western novels featuring Deputy US Marshal Page Murdock, Murdock works out of the Federal District Court of Judge Harlan Blackthorne, who, though he presides over Montana Territory rather than Indian Territory, shares many traits with Parker.^[46]
• In the Steve Earle song, "Tom Ames' Prayer," the narrator Ames is sentenced to death by Parker.^[47]
• In the midseason finale of Warehouse 13, Evil Artie uses an artifact called Judge Parker's Noose to magically suspend a room full of museum visitors.^[48]

See also

• Shannon Political Family

References

Books

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Isaac Parker.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Isaac Parker

• National Park Service (National Historic Site) entry about Judge Isaac Parker

• Isaac Parker at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Judge Isaac Parker reference on About.com
• Isaac Parker at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• List of men executed at Fort Smith while Isaac Parker presided