Judge Isaac C. Parker. The Hanging Judge of Ft. Smith, Arkansas

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Judge Isaac C. Parker (1838-1896) in his later years.

Gallows on a studio backlot for the film, Hang 'em High.

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Blog Created: 11-11-2024

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Isaac Charles Parker (October 15, 1838 – November 17, 1896), also known as "Hanging Judge" Parker, was an American politician and jurist. He served as a United States representative (congressman) in two separate districts subsequently from Missouri and was appointed as the first United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas (sitting in Fort Smith, Arkansas on the border), which also had jurisdiction over the adjacent Indian Territory (future Oklahoma, 1907) to the west. He was appointed by 18th President Ulysses S. Grant in 1875 and served in the federal judiciary until his death in 1896.

Parker became known as the "Hanging judge" of the American frontier / Old West, because he sentenced numerous convicts to death. In serving 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 were executed. The other 81 either died while incarcerated, were pardoned, or had their sentences commuted.

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Early life ~

Born in Ohio, Parker was the youngest son of Joseph Parker and his wife Jane Shannon. He was 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, called "reading the law" with an established firm, and passed the Ohio bar examination in 1859 at the age of 21.

Parker moved to St. Joseph, Missouri between 1859 and 1861, where he joined 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. He represented clients in the municipal and county courts.

Sons Charles and James Parker.

Political career ~

In April 1861, Parker ran as a Democrat for part-time position of city attorney for St. Joseph. He served three one-year terms, from April 1861 to 1863. When the American Civil War broke out four days after Parker took office, 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 re-election of Abraham Lincoln. In 1868, Parker won a six-year term as judge of the Twelfth Missouri Circuit.

Abraham Lincoln.

Parker was nominated for Missouri's 7th congressional district on September 13, 1870, backed by the Radical faction of the Republican Party. He resigned his judgeship and devoted his energy to his campaign. Parker won the election after his opponent withdrew two weeks prior to the vote. Parker was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives of the 42nd and 43rd U.S. Congresses, serving from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1875. He was the caucus nominee of his party for U.S. Senator in 1874.

The first session of the 42nd 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 43rd U.S. 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 the legislature would elect him to the Senate, so he sought a presidential appointment as judge for the Western District of Arkansas.

Federal judicial service ~

On May 26, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Parker as Chief Justice of the Utah Territory to replace James B. McKean. At his own request ten months later, Parker was instead nominated by President Grant on March 18, 1875, to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. It had been previously vacated by federal Judge William Story (1843–1921), who resigned under threat of impeachment by the Senate for allegations of corruption.

Ulysses S. Grant, James B. McKean and William Story.

Parker was confirmed the next day by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 1875, and received his commission the same day. He served in this position until his death in office 21 years later, on November 17, 1896.

Parker arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas (which sits on the western border between the 25th state of Arkansas and the Indian Territory, existed 1834–1907), a month and a half later on May 4, 1875, initially without his family. Parker's first session sitting as the district judge a week following was on May 10, 1875, with court prosecutor W. H. H. Clayton (William Henry Harrison Clayton, 1840–1920) present. Clayton subsequently served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas for fourteen of Parker's twenty-one years tenure on the court.

William Henry Harrison Clayton.

Judge Parker's courtroom.

On the same day of his first session in court, May 10, the new judge Parker also commissioned Bass Reeves (1838–1910), as a Deputy U.S. Marshal whom Marshal Fagan had heard about. Reeves knew the Territory well and could speak several Native languages and thus became the first Black / African American deputy marshal west of the Mississippi River.

Bass Reeves - first African-American US Deputy Marshal. Died 1910.

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. The Arkansas Governor commuted the sentence of another to life in prison due to his youth. In an interview shortly before his death later that November with the well-known daily newspaper with regional circulation The St. Louis Republic (1808–1919) on September 1, 1896, Parker said that he had really no say in whether a convict was to be hanged or not due to compulsory death sentences dictated by the law, and that he actually personally favored "the abolition of capital punishment".

Parker's court had final jurisdiction over federal crimes in the adjacent Indian Territory for 14 years from the time of his appointment in 1875 until 1889, as there was no other court available for appeals except to the President of the United States through his recently established (1870) United States Department of Justice of the executive branch in Washington, D.C.. The Five Civilized Tribes and other Native American tribes assigned in the Indian Territory (originally set up in the 1830s under seventh President Andrew Jackson in the controversial Indian Removal "Trail of Tears" from southeastern states in a far wider amount of territories to the west of the Mississippi River) had jurisdiction over their own citizens / members through their semi-independent tribal legal systems and governments allowed by treaty. Federal law in the Indian Territory applied to non-Indian United States citizens.

According to the policies set up by the United States Congress, the federal court for the Western District of Arkansas was to meet in four separate terms each year: in the months of February, May, August, and November. However, the court had such a large heavy caseload and wide territorial jurisdiction that the four terms were continuously run together. Parker's court sat for six days a week in order to ensure prosecuting as many cases as possible in each term, and often in session for up to ten hours each day. Finally eight years later, in 1883, the Congress reduced the jurisdiction and territory of the district court, reassigning parts of the Indian Territory to the south and the north borderlands to federal courts in adjacent states of Texas and Kansas (admitted earlier to the Union in 1845 and 1861, respectively); however, the increasing number of European American settlers moving into Indian lands and increased strife and criminal activity in sparsely settled areas still increased Parker's and the court's workload.

From May 1, 1889, (because of the opening of the newly organized Oklahoma Territory further west and some parts of the Indian Territories to White settlers in the famous Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 of that earlier April), Congress made changes to allow appeals of capital convictions to go instead to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.. Forty-four cases in which Parker imposed the death penalty were appealed to the Supreme Court. It overturned and ordered a re-trial for 30 of them.

Land Rush of 1889.

While serving as a federal district judge in Fort Smith, Parker also was active in the local community, serving on the Fort Smith School Board. He was the first president of St. John's Hospital, established by the local parish St. John's Episcopal Church. Today, this hospital still exists as a medical agency (although affiliated with a different Protestant denomination) as Baptist Health Fort Smith.

In his time on the federal court, Parker presided over a number of high-profile cases, including the trial of Crawford Goldsby, famously known as "Cherokee Bill", and the "Oklahoma Boomer" case involving David L. Payne, a non-Indian who illegally settled on tribal lands in the Indian Territory. In 1895, Parker heard two cases involving Goldsby. In the first, Goldsby was charged with killing a bystander during a general-store robbery the year before in 1894.

Crawford Goldsby, aka Cherokee Bill.

He was convicted in that case that lasted from February 26 to June 25, 1895, and Parker sentenced him to death. While awaiting execution, Goldsby attempted to escape prison and killed a prison guard during the incident. He was tried again and convicted once again in Parker's court; the judge sentenced him to a second death penalty on December 2, 1895. Goldsby was subsequently hanged three months later on March 17, 1896.

Depiction of Cherokee Bill's death after being sentenced.

Later years ~

Keeping with continued settlement in the American West, the Courts Act of 1889 enacted by Congress finally established a federal court system in the Indian Territory. This decreased the span of jurisdiction of the Western District of Arkansas Federal Court at Fort Smith.

Parker clashed with the U.S. Supreme Court in far off Washington on a number of occasions. In around two-thirds of cases appealed to the Supreme Court from his district court (before the authorization of the current intermediate United States Circuit Court of Appeals regional system in the Judiciary Act of 1891), his rulings were 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. Judge Parker refused to release Hudson on the grounds that the statute law did not provide the Supreme Court with the authority to demand Hudson's release.

A year later in 1895, Congress itself addressed the issue in dispute by passing a Courts Act that removed the remaining Indian Territory jurisdiction of the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith and powers of Judge Parker, effective September 1, 1896.

Death and legacy ~

When the August 1896 term began, Parker was at home, suffering from Bright's disease and too ill to preside over the court. The jurisdiction of the court over Indian Territory was ended on September 1, 1896. Reporters wanted to interview Parker 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 attendees up to that point. He is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery.

In 2019, the city of Fort Smith unveiled a statue of Parker representing law and order.

Representation in other media ~

Carlyle Mitchell was cast as Judge Parker in the 1961 episode "A Bullet for the D.A." on the Westerns syndicated television series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews in the late 1950s and 1960s. Carole Mathews played notorious female outlaw Belle Starr recently released from federal prison. In the story line, Belle unsuccessfully plots the revenge assassination of U.S. Attorney W. H. H. Clayton (portrayed by Don Haggerty) during a Wild West show held in Fort Smith.

In the 1968 Western film Hang 'Em High (starring Clint Eastwood), the character of Judge Adam Fenton (played by longtime character actor Pat Hingle in a fictional Fort Grant and town courthouse square, with six-man gallows scaffold set up in a Hollywood studio backlot), loosely resembles the person of Judge Parker and his judicial / criminal situation in Fort Smith, who is mentioned in the film as known by the epithet "the hanging judge".

Clint Eastwood with Pat Hingle as a Parker character in the film, Hang 'em High.

Charles Portis (1933–2020), features Judge Parker (and mentioned by name) in his Western / historical fiction novel True Grit of 1968, which has twice been adapted as notable films of the same name. First starring John Wayne in 1969 (for which he won his only "Best Actor" Academy Award ("Oscar") in 1970), and with Jeff Bridges in a 2010 remake about the hunt for the murder and robbery culprits escaped to the lawless Indian Territory. Parker is also a featured character in the John Wayne sequel movie about the one-eyed / black eyepatch-wearing grizzled boozing old peace officer character of the first film repeated in Rooster Cogburn of 1975. The no-nonsense strict judge was portrayed by longtime character actor James Westerfield in the 1969 movie and in the second by Western film actor and TV series star John McIntire of the Cogburn sequel six years later. Four decades later, the jurist was played by Jake Walker in the 2010 remake of the slightly different True Grit story, closer to Portis' 1968 novel.

John McIntire as Parker in Rooster Cogburn.

Zeke Proctor, one of Parker's deputy marshals, is featured in noted Westerns author Larry McMurtry's 1997 novel Zeke and Ned.

In the pilot episode of the early 1970s National Broadcasting Company (NBC-TV) rotating ("wheel series") television program Hec Ramsey on the weekly NBC Mystery Movie (portrayed by veteran film / TV actor Richard Boone). The title character is a former old-time frontier United States Marshal, now serving a modernizing Western town as a veteran grizzled deputy with a young "wet-behind-the-ears" inexperienced police chief who wears a suit and bowler hat in the early 1910s, briefly mentions having ridden for Judge Parker for several years previously.

In the Steve Earle Country-Western song, "Tom Ames' Prayer", the narrator Ames is sentenced to death by Parker. The song is also covered by Robert Earl Keen.

Parker is portrayed by Manu Intiraymi in the 2019 film Hell on the Border.

Parker is portrayed by actor Donald Sutherland in the recent 2023 cable / streaming TV series Lawmen: Bass Reeves, focusing on the formerly lesser known life and career of the Black Deputy U.S. Marshal in the 19th century American frontier and Indian Territory.

Donald Sutherland as Parker in the movie, Lawman: Bass Reeves.

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Portrait of Isaac C. Parker, Charcoal enhanced salted print photograph, Fort Smith National Historic Site.

Photo of Isaac Parker taken between 1860 and 1865.

Parker in his later years.

Judge Isaac Parker before his death in 1896.

Son Charles Chandler Parker.

Son James Joseph Parker in his law office.

James Joseph Parker on the right in his law office.

Ohio Governor, Wilson Shannon.

1908 Reunion of U.S. Deputy Marshals that rode for Judge Parker. The picture was taken in front of the courthouse and jail. The large buildings to the right and rear of the courthouse no longer exist.

Seven Deputy U.S. Marshals with deceased outlaw Ned Christie. The men are identified as (1) Paden Tolbert (2) Capt. G.S. White (3) Coon Ratteree (4) Enoch Mills (5) deceased Ned Christie (6) Thomas Johnson (7) Charles Copeland (8) Heck Bruner.

The photo above is of the seven U.S. Deputy Marshals and three posse members that finally put an end to the long career of renegade Ned Christie.

In 1908 former Deputy U.S. Marshals for the Federal Court of The Western District of Arkansas, Judge Isaac Charles Parker's court held a reunion in Fort Smith. This is one panel from the picture of the reunion. The buildings on the right in the picture no longer stand near the north end of Garrison Avenue. Some were destroyed in the devastating storm of 1990.

The man on the far left in the photo above is former marshal Bob Fortune, one of the few African American deputy marshals working for Parker's court. That number includes Bass Reeves. At the time of this reunion Bass Reeves was living in Muskegon, Oklahoma where he died in 1910. These black deputies, among some of the best serving Judge Parker have been mostly overlooked by the authors of books about Fort Smith and Parker's court. Bass Reeves, the best of the best now has a statue along Garrison Avenue of him mounted on his horse with his dog. It is standing near the Fort Smith National Historical Site as a reminder that African and Native Americans also served the court that brought the law to the Indian Territory when there was "No Law West of Fort Smith".

Belle Starr and her favorite horse in Fort Smith. The man in front of her is thought to be Deputy U.S. Marshal Tyler Hughes who arrested her at her cabin at Youngers Bend. During her life time she was only convicted of one crime, for horse theft. She claimed that its owner had loaned it to her. She only spent a brief time in Jail.

The controversial photo of Belle and Blue Duck, May 24, 1886. Belle agreed to pose for a photo with Blue Duck when his lawyer thought it would soften his client's image before Judge Parker. They were never lovers as popular legend claims.

A studio portrait of Belle Starr probably taken in Fort Smith in the early 1880's.

David Lewis Payne.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Heck Thomas.

James Bedell McKean, Colonel, 77th New York Infantry Regiment.

Ned Christie.

Rufus Buck gang after their capture. They would die on the gallows together for their vicious crimes. They were all still teenagers.

The expanded courthouse with new jail wing (on the left). The building was used as a federal court from 1888-1896.

The jail cells were surrounded by an iron cage enclosing the entire block. This was called the Bull Pen. A narrow walk-way surrounded the Bull Pen on which the guards patrolled the cell block. The cage has been partially cut away (far right) to give visitors to the museum access for a better view of the jail cells.