Item Detail
-
27680
-
1
-
0
-
English
-
Clash of the Legal Titans : The First Trial of John D. Lee
-
Honoring Juanita Brooks : A Compilation of 30 Annual Presentations from the Juanita Brooks Lecture Series, 1984-2014
-
St. George, UT
-
Dixie State University
-
779-809
-
The horrific Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 indelibly stained southern Utah history. It also led to one of the most celebrated trials in the annals of western America. In 1874, a grand jury indicted nine men for their roles in the massacre. Deputy marshals eventually arrested most of the men indicted. Of those arrested, one man turned state's evidence, and the rest spent time behind bars awaiting trial on murder charges. The first man arrested, John D. Lee, was the first, and -- as it turned out -- only man formally tried and executed for his role in the crime.
Lee's first trial ran from Tuesday, July 20, to Saturday, August 7, 1875, and ended in a hung jury. It also placed in the public eye two remarkable teams of lawyers recruited from Utah and Nevada -- among the best legal counsel available in the region at the time. Few trials of the day attracted more attention. Over the last 138 years, this clash of legal titans has been recounted again and again with varying degrees of detail, understanding, and accuracy.
In Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, Ronald W. Walker, Glen M. Leonard, and I only briefly mentioned Lee's first trial in our epilogue. Two works that others and I plan to publish in the future will recount the trial much more fully. Today, rather than duplicate those works, I would like to discuss three elements of the trial that provide context for understanding exactly what happened in this celebrated legal contest. Those three elements are (1) the characters, (2) the trial transcripts, and (3) the legal environment. [From the text]