The Haywood Trial: Clarence Darrow, Big Bill, and the Trial of the Century
Near Boise, Idaho
In the summer of nineteen oh seven, the Ada County Courthouse in downtown Boise became the center of one of the most closely watched legal battles in American history.
The case began with a bomb. On December thirtieth, nineteen oh five, former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg walked through the gate of his house in Caldwell, pulled it open, and triggered a concealed explosive. He died within hours. Police tracked down a man calling himself Thomas Hogan, who turned out to be Harry Orchard, a labor agitator and hired killer. Under interrogation, Orchard confessed not only to the Steunenberg killing but to many other bombings and murders across the western mining districts.
He then accused the leadership of the Western Federation of Miners, most prominently William Dudley Haywood, known to everyone as Big Bill, of ordering the killing. Haywood was the federation's secretary-treasurer and one of the most prominent labor radicals in the country. He was arrested in Denver and transported to Boise in what labor newspapers called a kidnapping.
The trial that followed was a national spectacle. The prosecution brought in William Borah, who was already a United States Senator. The defense brought in Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer in America. The courtroom packed every day. Reporters from newspapers across the country filed daily dispatches.
Darrow's closing argument ran for eleven hours over two days. When the jury came back on July twenty-ninth, after nine hours of deliberation, the verdict was not guilty. Haywood walked out of the Ada County Courthouse a free man.
Harry Orchard, who had confessed to taking part in more than a dozen killings, was convicted and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died in the Idaho Penitentiary in nineteen fifty-four.
