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The Hanging Judge
Judge Isaac C. Parker History
Judge Isaac Parker
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Introduction
Isaac Charles Parker (October 15, 1838 – November 17, 1896) was an
American politician and jurist. He served as the United States Congressman for Missouri's 7th congressional district for two
terms and presided over the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas for 21 years.
"I have ever had the single aim of justice in view... 'Do equal
and exact justice,' is my motto, and I have often said to the grand jury, 'Permit no innocent man to be punished, but let
no guilty man escape.'"
-Judge Isaac C. Parker, 1896
He became known as the "Hanging Judge" of the American Old West due to the
large number of convicts that he sentenced to death. In 21 years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases. In
more than 8,500 of these cases, the defendant either pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial. Parker sentenced 160 people
to death; 79 of them were executed.
Parker's health deteriorated in the 1890s and the jurisdiction and power
of his court were reduced by Congress. In September 1896, Congress effectively closed the District Court for the Western District
of Arkansas by removing its jurisdiction. Shortly after, on November 17, 1896, Parker died of complications due to Bright's
disease. He is buried in Fort Smith.
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| The Fort Smith Gallows |
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| The Gallows of Fort Smith, Arkansas |
Congressional sketch
Isaac Charles Parker: a Representative from Missouri; born near Barnesville,
Belmont County, Ohio, October 15, 1838; completed preparatory studies; attended Barnesville Academy; studied law and was admitted
to the bar in 1859; moved to Missouri in 1859 and began practice in St. Joseph; during the Civil War was a corporal in Company
A, Sixty-first Missouri Emergency Regiment; city attorney for St. Joseph, Mo., 1862-1864; elected circuit attorney in 1864
and resigned in 1867; elected circuit judge in 1868, but resigned in 1870 to become a candidate for Congress; elected as a
Republican to the Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses (March 4, 1871-March 3, 1875); was the caucus nominee of his party
for United States Senator in 1874; appointed judge of the United States District Court for Western Arkansas March 19, 1875,
and served until his death in Fort Smith, Sebastian County, Ark., November 17, 1896; interment in the National Cemetery, Fort
Smith, Ark.
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. At 17, he began an apprenticeship in law, and passed the Ohio bar exam in 1859.
Parker moved to St. Joseph, Missouri between 1859 and 1861 and worked at
his maternal uncle's law firm of Shannon and Branch. On December 12, 1861, Parker married Mary O'Toole, with whom he had sons
Charles and James. By 1862, Parker had his own law firm and was working in the municipal and country courts.
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| Names of Executions |
Politics
In April 1861, Parker ran as a Democrat for the St. Joseph part-time city
attorney. He served three one-year terms from April 1861 to 1863. 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. He had reached the rank
of corporal by the end of the war.
During the 1860s, Parker continued both his legal and political careers.
In 1864, he formally split from the Democratic Party over conflicting opinions on slavery. He ran as a Republican for county
prosecutor of the Ninth Missouri Judicial District. By the fall of 1864, he was serving as a member of the Electoral College
and voted for Abraham Lincoln. In 1868, Parker won a six-year term as judge of the Twelfth Missouri Circuit.
Parker was nominated for Missouri's 7th congressional district on September
13, 1870, backed by the Radical faction of the Republican party. He then resigned his judgeship and devoted his energy to
his campaign. Parker won the election after his opponent withdrew two weeks prior to the vote.
The first session of the Forty-second Congress convened on March 4, 1871.
During his first term, Parker helped to secure pensions for veterans in his district and campaigned for a new federal building
to be built in St. Joseph. He sponsored a failed bill designed to enfranchise women and allow them to hold public office in
United States territories. He also sponsored legislation to organize the Indian Territory under a territorial government.
Parker was again elected to Missouri's 7th district in the forty-third Congress.
A local paper wrote of him, "Missouri had no more trusted or influential representative in ... Congress during the past two
years". In his second term, Parker concentrated on Indian policy, including the fair treatment of the tribes residing in the
Indian Territory. His speeches in support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs gained national attention.
In 1874, Parker was the caucus nominee of the Republican Party for a Missouri
Senate seat. However, the political tide had shifted in Missouri; it seemed unlikely that he would be elected to the Senate,
so he sought a presidential appointment as judge for the Western District of Arkansas.
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| Judge Parker and Fort Smith Courtroom |
District judge
On May 26, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Parker as Chief Justice
of the Utah Territory to replace 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, replacing William Story who was facing impeachment
proceedings due to allegations of corruption.
Parker arrived in Fort Smith on May 4, 1875, initially without his family.
Parker's first session as the district judge was 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.
In May 1875, Parker tried 18 men during his first session of court, all
of whom were charged with murder; 15 were convicted in jury trials. Parker sentenced eight of them to a mandatory death penalty.
He ordered six of the men to be executed at the same time on September 3, 1875. One of those sentenced to death was killed
trying to escape, and another's sentence was commuted to life in prison due to his youth. Parker gave an interview to the
St. Louis Republic on September 1, 1896, in which he stated that he had no say whether a convict was to be hanged due to compulsory
death sentences, and that he favored "the abolition of capital punishment".
Parker's court had final jurisdiction over the Indian Territory from 1875
until 1889, as there was no court available for appeals. The legal systems and governments of the Five Civilized Tribes and
other Native American tribes in the Indian Territory covered their own citizens, and federal law applied to non-Indian United
States citizens in the territory.
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 caseload
that the four terms ran together. Parker's court sat six days a week in order to ensure that they tried as many cases as possible
each term, and often up to ten hours each day. In 1883, Congress reduced the jurisdiction of the court, reassigning parts
of the Indian Territory to federal courts in Texas and Kansas; however, the increasing number of settlers moving into the
Indian Territories actually increased the court's workload.
From May 1, 1889, changes made by Congress allowed appeals of capital convictions
to the United States Supreme Court. Forty-four cases in which Parker imposed the death penalty were appealed to the Supreme
Court, which overturned and ordered a re-trial for 30 of them.
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).
During his time on the court, Parker presided over a number of high-profile
cases, including the trial of Cherokee Bill and the "Oklahoma Boomer" case involving David L. Payne, who illegally settled
on lands in the Indian Territory. In 1895, Parker heard two cases involving Crawford Goldsby (Cherokee Bill). The first involved
Goldsby killing a bystander during a general-store robbery in 1894. He was convicted in a case that lasted from February 26
to June 25, 1895, 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 gave him a second death sentence on December 2, 1895. Goldsby
was eventually hanged on March 17, 1896.
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| Desk of Congressman Isaac C. Parker |
| Ft. Smith National Historic Site |
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| Jails, courtroom, exhibits and walking trails are included in the Fort Smith National Historic Site. |
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.
Parker clashed with the Supreme Court on a number of occasions, with around
two-thirds of cases appealed to the Supreme Court being upheld. In 1894, Parker gained national attention in a dispute with
the Supreme Court over the case of Lafayette Hudson. Hudson was convicted of assault with intent to kill and sentenced to
four years 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 the authority to demand Hudson's release.
In 1895, Congress passed a new Courts Act which removed the remaining Indian
Territory jurisdiction of the Western District, effective September 1, 1896. This effectively closed the federal court for
the Western District of Arkansas by removing its jurisdiction.
Death and legacy
Parker was at home when the August 1896 term began, too sick to preside
over the court, as he suffered from Bright's disease. The jurisdiction of the court came to an end on September 1, 1896, over
lands in the Indian Territory; reporters wanted to interview him about his career but had to talk to him at his bedside. Parker
died on November 17, 1896, of a number of health conditions, including heart degeneration and Bright's disease. His funeral
in Fort Smith had the highest number of attenders up to that time. He is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery.
In 21 years on the federal bench, Parker tried 13,490 cases; more than 8,500
defendants either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial. He sentenced 160 people to death and 79 were executed; the others
either died while incarcerated or were acquitted, pardoned, or their sentences were commuted.
Parker has been represented in a number of fictionalised portrayals of his
time at Fort Smith. Charles Portis features 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. He 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. Zeke Proctor, one of Parker's
deputy marshals, is featured in Larry McMurtry's 1997 novel Zeke and Ned.
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| Congressman Isaac C. Parker |
| Fort Smith National Historic Site |
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| Congressman Isaac C. Parker |
For twenty-one years, Judge Isaac C. Parker held the bench of the U.S. Court
for the Western District of Arkansas. His tenure was unique in the history of the federal judiciary; while most U.S. district
judges toiled away on civil cases, Parker heard thousands of criminal complaints involving disputes and violence between Indians
and non-Indians. He sentenced 160 people to death, and for fourteen years he did so while the condemned had no right of appeal.
Sensational cases and mass executions overshadowed Parker's contributions
in rehabilitating offenders, reforming the criminal justice system, and advocating the rights of the Indian nations. In Fort
Smith he tried to create, in his own words, "the moral force of a strong federal court." Remembered
in Western novels and films as a "Hanging Judge," Isaac Parker's real career and accomplishments in Fort Smith are far more
fascinating and complicated.
Credits: Fort Smith National Historic Site; Congress.gov; National Park
Service; Brodhead, Michael J. (2003). Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
ISBN 9780806135274. Retrieved December 15, 2015; Burton, Art T. (2008). Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier
Marshal Bass Reeves. University of Nebraska Press. p. 30. ISBN 9780803205413; Burton, Jeffrey (September 1, 1997). Indian
Territory and the United States, 1866–1906: Courts, Government, and the Movement for Oklahoma Statehood. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806129181; Estleman, Loren D. (2009). The Branch and the Scaffold. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
ISBN 9781429924368; Galonska, Juliet L. (2000). Williams, Nancy A.; Whayne, Jeannie M., eds. Arkansas Biography: A Collection
of Notable Lives. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 9781557285881; Grant, Ulysses Simpson; Simon, John Y. (1998). The Papers
of Ulysses S. Grant: June 1, 1871 – January 31, 1872. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780809321988;
Hafnor, John (2009). Strange But True, America: Weird Tales from All 50 States. Lone Pine Productions. ISBN 9780964817555;
Harman, S. W. (1992). Hell on the Border: He Hanged Eighty-eight Men. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803223622;
Harring, Sidney L. (February 25, 1994). Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in
the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521467155; Harrington, Fred Harvey (1951). Hanging
Judge. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806128399; Leeper, Maranda (2014). Lancaster, Guy, ed. Arkansas in Ink:
Gunslingers, Ghosts, and Other Graphic Tales. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 9781935106739; Metz, Leon Claire (2014).
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438130217; Shirley, Glenn (1968).
Law West of Fort Smith. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803251830; Tuller, Roger (2001). "Let No Guilty Man Escape":
A Judicial Biography of "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806133065.
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