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Wednesday January 5, 1916
Salt Lake City, Utah - Disbarment Proceedings Begun Against Judge Hilton

From The Ogden Standard of December 22nd, comes news of a recent development in what passes for the practice of Law in the Pursuit of Justice in the state of Utah:

HILTON DISBARMENT COMPLAINT HAS BEEN FILED
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Salt Lake, Dec. 22.-Disbarment proceedings against O. N. Hilton, the Denver lawyer, because of attacks made upon Utah justice and integrity at the Joe Hillstrom funeral in Chicago, were formally instituted in the supreme court of the state yesterday by the Utah State Bar association.

The grievance committee of the bar association filed with the supreme court information charging the Denver lawyer with unprofessional and immoral conduct in violation of his oath and obligations as an attorney practicing in Utah courts. The petition asks that Hilton be cited to appear before the supreme court and answer why he should not be barred from practicing in the Utah courts.

The complaint is signed by C. S. Varian, chairman, and A. L. Hoppaugh and Frank K. Nebeker, comprising the grievance committee, and countersigned by Herbert R. MacMillan as president of the Utah State Bar association.

The bar association, in its formal complaint, quotes from the address at the Hillstrom funeral in Chicago, where in the lawyer charged that the influences of the Mormon church sent Hillstrom to the expiation of a crime for which he was not proved guilty and wherein he attacked Governor Spry and the Utah supreme court. Hilton was admitted to practice here in the supreme court in 1912. It also quotes from other utterances of Hilton in connection with the case....

[Photograph added.]

SOURCE
The Ogden Standard
(Ogden, Utah)
-Dec 22, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/image/80830023/

IMAGE
Orrin N Hilton
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=888

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FUNERAL ORATION BY JUDGE 0. N. HILTON
IN MEMORIAM OF JOE HILL
AT THE WEST SIDE AUDITORIUM, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS,
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25th, 1915.
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Mr. Chairman, men and woman of Chicago:

It given me unqualified pleasure to be with you here today and to join my tribute to yours for this dead man, and I think as I look into your faces that I read a determination, and a grim one too, to know about this matter and what the facts and circumstances are attendant thereon, and while, as the Chairman has stated to you, I was not familiar as an actor with the trial of the case resulting in his conviction, I only entered the case afterwards, still I have been thoroughly conversant with it since that time, and I want to tell it, all of it to you today.

I am going to do that without rancor, without prejudice, without malice. The cold facts as I understand them to be, and I want anyone of you here if you feel so disposed, to ask any questions. I shall be glad to answer; it will not interfere with me at all, I assure you.

Standing here in the precincts of the City of Chicago that has been broadened by the learning of David Swing, and holds in loving memory the tenderness and broad humanity of Robert Ingersoll, I feel that it becomes us here to reverently and earnestly speak upon the serious matter before us today, and without prejudice to see if we can gather from the facts of their tragic occurrence something, somehow that will aid the onward march of humanity.

Men are born into the world and die out of it generation upon generation. A distinguished orator once said, "Man, the noblest work of creation, is the sport of every wind that blows, of every tied that flows. In the morning he rises up and flourishes; in the evening he is cut down, the individual withering but the world growing more and more."

But occasionally, my friends, a life is taken away from our midst under such circumstances as makes us pause and brings to mind with distinctness the bitter truth that man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. The personality of men like Leo Prank down in Georgia or Joe Hillstrom in Salt Lake City is not a matter of so great importance, but the communities' spirit of injustice, of intolerance and despotism that ultimately wipes out that personality from existence, - that is a matter of inquiry,and that is what is interesting us today.

The genesis of this transaction and of this tragedy out in Salt Lake City took its rise in that bureaucratic power that the pioneer fathers of Illinois detected in the early attitude of the Mormons towards cherished and established principles, and which lead to the expulsion of the Mormons from the State of Illinois, not because of their religious belief, my friends, not that, but because of those peculiar tenents and practices that threatened to undermine a well ordered community; to deprive the individual of his liberty and to lash him and whip him into submission by threats of the power of vengeance by the leaders of the Church, a spirit that resulted in the Danites, and execution of the commands of the Mormon Church, a power that adopts any means to accomplish its own personal ends.

And so when they were expelled from Illinois they sought a theatre in the far Wast for the peculiar practices of the Mormon Church. It was arranged with Bridgeman, the discoverer of the Great Salt Lake, and with Wiggins, a scout, his companion, who died only a few years ago in Denver,- with these two men as guides of these pilgrims that went out from Illinois,- that they should start for that region piloted by these two men, Bridgeman and Wiggins and they were lead by Brigham Young, and they were after a new land that they might go in and possess it, and after they had passed the summit of the Rocky Mountains upon their pilgrimage and had gone down into the peaceful slopes of the beautiful Weber Canyon, Brigham Young told these two guides that their destination must remain a secret, and that they must appear to come suddenly into the promised land, and so Wiggins told him that just around that mountain in the distance he would see the beautiful Salt Lake, and so he said to Wiggins and to Bridgeman, "I will hold the body of the pilgrims here and I will go forward and I will strike upon the ground three times with my staff and then the Lake will suddenly appear as a revelation from the Almighty," and that was agreed upon, and so Brigham Young goes back to his people and he says, "Beloved, see what I through the Lord have brought to you," and they raised up their eyes, and there, with a firm belief that it was created by the omnipotent power of their leader, when they saw the great Salt Lake spread its beauty before their almost enchanted eyes. When they looked upon the summits of the mighty Wasatch Mountains clad with forests of pine and fir, and lifting their crowns into the eternal fields of snow, the long tramp through the dry and dusty desert was forgotten and the people believed that they had at last come into a veritable promised land, one flowing with milk and honey.

Now this is history. It must be conceded that Brigham Young was one of the greatest executive men of the world; that as an empire builder he was without a peer, but the moral slant of the man, his great selfishness, his lust for individual aggrandizement, and his destruction of the family ties and of womanhood narrowed and scarred his work, and today over and above that mighty empire there is a bureaucracy dominated by greed, selfishness and a plentitude of power that has defied the government of the United States decade after decade, and today teaches the followers that supreme power resides in the Church, and that it will visit with vengeance upon any questioning of that power. Don't let anybody, my friends, fool you into the belief with the lying story that this power is diminishing. It was never as powerful as it is today, never before as dangerous, and remember right here and now that Governor William Spry is a Mormon of the Mormons.

Oh, ladies and gentlemen, that I had the time and that this was the appropriate occasion to tell you more fully of that hideous, slimy monster, the Mormon Church, which made this crime here possible.

Don't you know that it is the vilest thing in our national life today, the admitted menace to every institution worth preserving, - Mormonism. Do you realize that like a filthy, rotting cancer, it holds the states of Utah, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico utterly powerless today in its strangling grasp, and is sweeping down into Colorado like a prairie fire. A Mormon jury to convict him and a Mormon Governor to deny him the poor boon of a commutation. Do you believe, men and women of Chicago, that this silent form would be in your midst today if Joe Hillstrom had been a good Mormon, paying his tithes promptly to the Church, and had had two, three or four wives to call him husband? Go and listen, every one of you, if you can, to the address of the Hon. Frank J. Cannon, at one time Senator from Utah, son of a Mormon Bishop, contemporary with Brigham Young, and himself one of a family of twenty children. Listen to that remarkable address called "Under the Prophets" and you will understand. He is in New York; he will be in Chicago soon.

On a magnificent bronze and marble tablet just in front of the Utah Hotel in the City of Salt Lake there are the names of 150 of the early mormons who led that band into the valley, and the fourth name from the top in the first column is the name of Hubert C. Kimball, who succeeded Brigham Young. Herbert C. Kimball, his nephew, one of the most prominent men in the Mormon Church, was the foreman of the jury that convicted Joe Hill. And when that jury was sworn, Joe Hill's fate was sealed. That is all there was to it. And when the villainy of the conviction became known and its awful import swept over the land; when more than a hundred thousand petitioners, grand men and women from every state wrote and wired the Board of Pardons and Gov. Spry; when meetings here, in New York, in Milwaukee, Toledo, San Francisco, attended by thousands, all unite by resolutions; when the Swedish minister and our own gracious President Wilson, all beseech and beg, "Give Joe Hillstrom a fair change; give him a show," what does Gov. Spry reply? He sent the - - you saw it in the papers - - this defiant answer: "Mind your own business. President Wilson; you are interfering with Justice in the State of Utah."

I am not disposed, men and women here today, to do Gov. Spry any injustice. I shall not abuse or vlllify him. I deprecate violence and I wish him no harm. A cause is a poor one indeed that enlists disciples of hate or indites abusive, anonymous, threatening letters. Gov. Spry has said that he has received many of these. Those things don't pay. Just remember that God holds the scales of Justice and of Right with an even poise in his omnipotent hand, and that he has said, "Vengeance is mine; [I?] will repay."

But I was telling you somewhat of this Mormon Church and of its resources and its power. That it is in many respects beneficent is not to be denied. That it has builded out there a mighty city, a glorious city, and developed a wonderful country, which is a great credit in its upbuilding capacity is equally certain. Into this community, after they were established there many people. Gentiles, like you and me and Joe Hill, - they call them Gentiles, - they were naturally attracted there and they came and settled down. This is history now. And the Mormons, with this same spirit of intolerance, jealous, vindictive, splenatic, looked at them and they said to themselves, "We will get them out of here, if not one way, then another," and they had a man by the name of Lee, John Lee, who was quite willing and capable of doing their bidding. And so Lee went among the Gentiles and he said, "Now you are not getting along here very well with the Mormons, and I tell you what I want to do. I am going to lead you away from here and I am going to bring you to a fairer land than this. We sill go to California." All a put-up job with the Mormons. And so Lee one day marches out of Salt Lake with the Gentiles at his back, and instead of taking them out into the promised land, over the plains and through the desert, he led them into the mountain fastnesses, and there they were set upon by those Danites disguised as Indians, Mormons disguised as Indians, and every one of the 300 members of that band, men, women and children, some of them at their mother's breast, were butchered on the mountain fastnesses and left there rotting, a prey to the wolves and the coyotes, and every one of that devoted band were scalped. That was the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

So that, at all times since then, the coming of the Gentiles has been looked upon with suspicion, and while its power well knows that its uprooting would follow any open defiance, it has never hesitated to embrace those forms of countless persecutions.

Now, into these surroundings not long ago came a young man, a Swedish boy, by name Joseph Hillstrom, better known as Joe Hill. A boy of some superior education according to his station in life. Himself a working man, he sought friends, naturally, among that class. Then, too, he was somewhat of a dreamer of dreams. It is not believed that because a man's hands showed the stress of daily toil, that because his housing was poor and oftentimes inefficient, that because he dwelt in the depths where men labor, that he was any less a man, and he lived among these people singing his songs for their amusement, sympathizing with them, and being one of them and looking forward to that bright dawn, as he hoped, of an industrial freedom and liberty.

All of a sudden there came a tragedy in that city. A man by the name of Morrison, who kept a grocery store and had two young boys, was slain in his store by two men who went in there in the night time with handkerchiefs over their faces, burst open the door and shouted, "We have got you now," and fired shots that killed Morrison and one of his boys. The boy fired back at the assailants, and the revolver with one chamber empty was found by the dead body of the boy close by his outstretched hand.

Joe Hillstrom, six miles away, and a few hours after that, applied at a doctor's office for the treatment of a wound. He had been shot through the body. The doctor inquired into the circumstances, and Joe told him that he had received his wound in a quarrel over a woman, and that he did not care to have anything said about it. The doctor gave him a sedative and called the police.

The officers based upon this fact that Hillstrom had been wounded, a prosecution, but the evidence was entirely uncertain, circumstantial, inconclusive, but the criminal machinery had been set in motion against a young man, who was inclined to laugh at it. Surely it had no terrors for him. He believed as he had been taught, that great protection was always thrown around an innocent man, and that it was impossible that justice could miscarry; that those in authority would be as eager to protect him as any other man, but when the toils were drawn tighter and tighter he began to be alarmed. Here was a man, Morrison, the deceased, who was prominent in the city, and it was known throughout Salt Lake City that he, Morrison, had very many pronounced enemies that had threatened his life. He had been robbed and held up on two other occasions before the time when he was killed, and he knew, he said in his lifetime to others, he knew who his assailants were, and that they were after his life, not his money, and on the very day of the homicide he had prepared his revolver as if he had expected the coming of hie enemies where he could handily reach it, but when the man broke into the store Morrison was engaged in handling a sack of potatoes down in the middle of the room and he could not get to his revolver.

As I say, these two men first opened the door and said, "We have got you now," and immediately the shots rang out and Morrison was killed, together with his boy, the older boy. Merlin. Now what did Joe Hill know or think about it, or what did he care concerning a feud, a quarrel between parties that he did not know? But when the criminal machinery there is set in motion it is going to strike a victim. And woe to that man to whom it directs its suspicion, for innocence is no protection against the cunning web that is cast around them and drawn tighter and tighter until it is stained with his life's blood.

There was no motive on Hillstrom's part. He had no acquaintance with this man Morrison; no robbery of the store, you see, at all, but the machinery was in motion and it was moving toward Joe, and no lack of motive, no lack of knowledge could stay its inexorable course. He was a doomed man.

His trial came on. He had two lawyers to defend him, a man by the name of Scott and a man by the name of MoDougal. The jurors were being brought in from the other divisions to make up the panel and Joe noticed that and he said, "I don't like the idea that a jury shall be brought in from the other divisions. I want the jury that shall try me, I want them drawn from the box. I don't want a hand picked jury." He told this to his lawyers and he said, "Object to this manner of examining a jury", and his lawyers did not object.

Finally he arose to his feet in the court room. He said, "If your Honor pleases, there are too many prosecutors in this case, and I am going to get rid of two of them right now. Mr. Scott and Mr. McDougal, do you see that door over there? Get out of that door. I will try this case myself. I can try it better than you can." The court of course was thunderstruck. It was then about half past eleven or thereabouts in the morning, and the court and the District Attorney held a consultation together and they said, "Well, we recognize your right to discharge your counsel, but we will take this matter up, and at the incoming of court at two o'clock it will be decided." At two o'clock in the afternoon, when court convened, the judge said, "I recognize, Mr. Hillstrom, that you have a right to employ counsel of your own choice; that is undisputed. It is your constitutional right, your privilege. Have you any means to employ any other counsel?" And Joe said, "No, I have not." These other men had been paid all the money he had. Well, the court proceeded and he said, "I am at a loss to see where these two lawyers have not carefully guarded your interests thus far. I think they have been loyal to you, but however, do you want the court to appoint other attorneys to defend you?" And Joe said, "Yes". "Very Well", the court answered, "Very well, I will appoint two lawyers as amicuscuriae," that means friends of the court, "to defend you, and I will appoint Mr. Scott and Mr. McDougal, the two lawyers that Joe had just discharged."

Joe leaped to his feet instantly and he said, "Why, what do you mean? I have just fired these men. You appoint them over again to defend me? I am the defendant. I have some rights here. I am on trial for my life." The court said, "Don't make any difference. If you are not satisfied with these two men you can cross examine the witnesses yourself after they get through, and so with that beautiful arrangement, with that kind of administration of justice, that President Wilson is interfering with, according to Governor Spry, they went to trial. Joe never spoke to his lawyers again.

At that moment Virginia Stephens, an earnest woman in the cause came to Denver and told me of it and wanted me to hurry to Salt Lake City, but Denver is a good ways from Salt Lake City, and she had been nearly two days coming and it would take me as long to go, and I knew that it would be all over before I could get there, and so I wired a very good friend of mine and a very able lawyer by the name of Christianson to get down into the court room as quick as he could and help Joe in his peril and in his distress.

And so Christianson went to the court room with my telegram in his hand, and as he entered that court room and gazed into the faces of those jurymen as they were seated in the box, just one glance, he turned to Joe and whispered in his ear, "Joe, great God, proofs or no proofs, you are gone." And he was, right then and there.

Let me show you now where the trial was unfair, and to do this I must trespass a little on your patience, for now I want to read for you from the record in this case, the solemn writing that shows the facts. First you all know that there is the great presumption of innocence, that humane provision of the law that shields every man charged with crime with the presumption that he is innocent. You all understand about that, and that that presumption always is supposed to continue throughout the whole case until the prosecution makes his guilt appear to the satisfaction of the jury and beyond any reasonable doubt. You understand that doctrine of law. It is familiar to every layman. It is enjoined upon every jury the moment that they enter the box.

Then we should look for a motive. That is always important in the trial of a case, for all actions spring from motives, for as one of the great law writers observes "An action without a motive is an effect without a cause." Why, you know motive is the main spring of every action in life that any of us do. It Is the hidden monitor that governs and controls every act of ours. So long prior to the homicide and at a time when it was impossible for Joe Hill to have been present even in the City, Morrison, the dead man, had said that he knew who his enemies were and that they were after his life, not his money, and there was a reporter of one of the papers that was down in the court room who had talked to Morrison in his lifetime, and he offered to take the stand to testify that Morrison had told him that he knew who his enemies were and that they were after his life and not his money, and the testimony was refused by the trial judge, and he was not permitted to testify.

You can see at a glance what the motive was. The exulting expression of those men as they first entered the door, "We have got you now", showed the climax of a personal feud. It was always known that there were persons in Salt Lake City who had a motive to kill Morrison, and a proper and a patient inquiry would eventually have lead to the discovery of those persons, which is the clearest proof in the world that Hillstrom, not knowing the man, could have had no motive, and hence the state failed to create the suspicion of a motive.

Papers all over this land contained the lying statement that Joe was shown by the proofs of the case to have been in Morrison's store on the afternoon of the murder. Not a living human being testified on the trial to anything of the kind. Every particle of that is manufactured in Salt Lake and sent out to the world, a miserable lying story as every was uttered by the Ten Piutes. No man, no witness sworn in the case ever testified to any such thing as that.

Then of course, if there was no motive shown, you see there was no attempt made to rob the store. Here was money right here in the till, no attempt made to take it. Nobody reached over and took out the money. Nobody said hands up, nothing of that kind.

Another thing, the bullet that Joe was shot with entered about here, as shown by the court, but entered the body in about this position, four inches lower. All the bullets that were fired by the assailants were found in the store, but the bullet that was fired through Joe's body was never found, and there was only enough bullets found in the store to match the wounds that were in the body of the boy and in the body of Morrison, so Joe was not shot there, that's a cinch. He was shot somewhere, somehow, when he had his hand in the air like this, which would bring the coat exactly up to the point of the entrance here, and the ball went entirely through Joe's body, in here and out about in that position.

Now then there must be an identification, and here is what the prosecution undertook to do in showing an identification. No motive now; no earthly witness that had ever seen Joe down at the store or that had ever seen him speak to Morrison or anybody else that knew Morrison. Now what about the identification? You have got to have an identification so that every man in that jury box must be able to say, "I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of this defendant." That is the rule. The young man, the man that was not shot, the youngest boy that was in the store when these men entered the store, he testified, - and I am taking this from the record, "I saw Hillstrom at the jail." They took him down there to see if he could identify him."He compares just about the same as the man I saw. Both men used the same words, 'We have got you now'. I did not see the man's countenance nor the shape of his head. It is a kind of a guess with me."

Now the next was a woman who was crossing the street about half past nine with her husband, half past nine or ten o'clock, and she said that she was crowded away off of the sidewalk by two men who passed her, and that she looked at them and they looked at her. One was slightly taller than the other. "I have seen Hillstrom at the jail." They sent her down there to see if she would identify him, told her that he was the man and to go down to the jail and identify him. "I have seen Hillstrom at the jail and his height is the same as that of the man who turned and looked at me." "Well," says the State's Attorney to this woman, "How did they compare?" She says, "Well, they look a good deal alike to me." Further on she says, "I have an honest doubt as to the identity of Hillstrom with the man who turned and looked at me on the street," and later she says, "No, I won't say that he is the same man,"

Then comes another woman witness, and I am going to give you all,- all there was to the identification, - "I saw two men on the Northeast corner of Morrison's store the night of the shooting. They came towards me and I noticed one of them had a red sweater around his neck, and one was taller than the other, and his height corresponds very much with the height of Hillstrom. As far as face and features are concerned, I took no particular note. One man wore a cap, the other a hat. I think the taller of the men had a cap on.

Then another woman says, "The night of the shooting I heard a moaning noise across the street and a man cough. I did not look out, but the next morning I found a phony patch of blood as I went across the street on the snow,"

Now a woman who lived exactly opposite the store says, "I heard some shots that night and I saw a man across the street and he said, "Oh, Bob, I am shot" loud enough so that I could hear, and Hillstrom compares with the man that I saw coming out of Morrison's store, and Hillstrom's voice when I heard it down to the jail sounded like that of the man coming from the store." The identification of a voice at the jail sounding like that of the man that came from the store.

Then another woman said, "Why, I saw a man running from the store and I heard him say, "I am shot", and he was tall and slender and had a dark coat and a soft hat, and all I can say is he was tall and thin and so is Mr. Hillstrom."

There, men and women, is every particle of the prosecution's case against Joe Hillstrom, every word of identification. What was it, Sir?

A VOICE: How old was the Morrison boy?
Judge Hilton: Which one of them?
THE VOICE: The one that testified.
JUDGE HILTON: The one that testified was about twelve. The one that was shot was in the vicinity of eighteen, thereabouts, I am not exactly sure of the ages.

Now let us go just a step further. I want you to know all about this Hill case. About the blood stains, it is claimed in the evidence that Mr. Morrison's son got the revolver and fired one shot. All the bullets, as I have said, that were fired from the guns of the assailants, they were all found, and that bullet, it is undisputed, as I have said to you, that did hit Hillstrom, wherever he got it, which he has never told, went clear through his body, and the district attorney said that he would find that bullet if he had to take off every piece of paper on the wall of that store in order to find it, but he never did, because it wasn't there, but a witness says about the blood stains, "We found some blood stains down an alley, and between two barns we found a red handkerchief," and the witness who was with him said, "There was some blood tracks and dog prints with blood tracks that lead to an old dairs house, and we found where the dog had been going in the snow, and we found the dog that had the sore foot, and we saw the tracks, whether we concluded it was a dog's blood or not." And the chemist who made an analysis of the blood that was found on the snow and on the sidewalk said that all he could testify to was that the blood was of mammalian origin. That means that is was not fishes' blood. It was blood of some warm blooded animal, but he could not tell what.

And another witness said in the same connection that he found a red handkerchief in a room which he was told had once been occupied by Hillstrom, and that he never talked with Hillstrom on that subject at all, and only stated what had been told him.

How is that for proof against a man when on trial for his life? And this doctor to whom Joe applied to dress his wound, testified that "Hillstrom, or Joe Hill, as I called him, explained to me that he was shot in a quarrel over a woman; that he was as much to blame as the other fellow was, and he wanted it kept quiet," and Dr. Bird testified that he took Joe to the Eucelius House at the request of the other doctor, and that the lights were turned out of the machine when they were approaching the house, and the people from the Eucelius House came out and they asked Joe if that was where he was hurt. "No." [.....]

Part II will appear in tomorrow's Hellraisers.

SOURCE
Funeral Oration by Judge O. N. Hilton, In Memoriam of Joe Hill at the West Side Auditorium,
Chicago, Illinois, Thursday, November 25th, 1915
http://images.archives.utah.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p17010coll...

Note: For this text of Hilton's speech, we can thank Governor William Spry who sent one of his spies to Chicago to attend the funeral and make a record of the speech.

IMAGE
Joe Hill Funeral Program pages 1-4, Chicago Nov 25, 1915
http://local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/undercover.html

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