Isaac Charles Parker served as federal judge for the Federal Court of the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith. He tried 13,490 cases, with 9,454 of them resulting in guilty pleas or convictions. His court was unique in the fact that he had jurisdiction over all of Indian Territory, covering over 74,000 square miles. He sentenced 160 people to death, including four women. Of those sentenced to death under Parker, seventy-nine men were executed on the gallows. Born on October 15, 1838, in Barnesville, Ohio. At seventeen, Parker decided to study law. He became an apprentice working under a Barnesville lawyer and studied on his own, passing the bar in 1859. He began his legal career with his uncle, D. E. Shannon, in St. Joseph, Missouri, at the Shannon and Branch law firm, and by 1861, he was operating on his own. It was during this time that he met his wife, Mary O’Toole, whom he married on December 12, 1861. He won election as the city attorney on the Democratic ticket in April 1861, but he had been in office only a few days when the Civil War broke out, causing him to re-evaluate his political beliefs. He enlisted in the Sixty-first Missouri Emergency Regiment, a home guard unit for the Union forces. Parker ran for county prosecutor of the Ninth Missouri Judicial District on the Republican ticket. He also served as a member of the Electoral College in the election of 1864. He served two terms in the U.S. Congress, being elected in 1870 and 1872. While in Congress, he assisted veterans of his district in securing pensions, lobbied for construction of a new federal building in St. Joseph, sponsored legislation that would have allowed women the right to vote and hold public office in U.S. territories, and also sponsored legislation that would have organized the Indian Territory under a formal territorial government. It was during his second term that his speeches supporting the Bureau of Indian Affairs received national attention. During his second term in Congress, he put most of his effort into Indian policy and the fair treatment of the tribes that were living in the Indian Territory. It was after his second term in Congress that he began to seek a presidential appointment as judge of the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith. On March 18, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the position. Parker arrived in Fort Smith on May 4, 1875, and held court for the first time on May 10, 1875. During his first term, he found eight men guilty of murder. Six of them died on September 3, 1875, on the gallows at Fort Smith. Parker’s court was supposed to hold four terms each year but the caseload for the court was so large that the four terms ran together. Parker held court six days a week, each day often lasting up to ten hours each in order to try as many cases as possible. In 1883, Congress made cuts to jurisdiction areas. Jurisdiction over some portions of the Indian Territory was given to federal courts in Texas and Kansas, providing some relief to Parker’s court. There was, however, a continuous stream of settlers into the Indian Territory, over which he still had jurisdiction, and the crime rate increased.
Over the years, Parker became very involved in the community of Fort Smith. At his urging, the government gave the majority of the 300-acre military reservation to the city in 1884 to fund the public school system. He also served many positions besides judge in the community, including serving as the first board president of Saint John’s Hospital and he was active on the school board. Parker is often called the "Hanging Judge.” At the time, capital offenses of rape and murder were punished by death. However, it was not for the judge to decide guilt. Determining guilt was left up to the jury. Parker actually had no say in whether a person was to be hung. Outlaws such as Cherokee Bill, Colorado Bill, and the Rufus Buck Gang are some of the well known who were sentenced to death and executed during Parker’s tenure. On September 1, 1896, another act went into effect, removing the last of Parker’s Indian Territory jurisdiction. When the August 1896 term began, however, Parker was too ill to preside. Reporters interviewing Parker about the end of his jurisdiction over Indian Territory had to do so at his bedside. Parker died on November 17, 1896, of numerous health problems, including degeneration of the heart and Bright’s Disease. He is buried in the Fort Smith National Cemetery, only blocks from where he once presided as judge.
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