Judicial Vendetta: California Style

• Date: 01 December 1959
• Published date: 01 December 1959
• Author: Dow Votaw
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295901200404
• Subject Matter: Articles

JUDICIAL VENDETTA: CALIFORNIA STYLE
DOW VOTAW
University of California
HE
CASUAL STUDENT of constitutional law who finds the now
familiar rule that &dquo;an act when necessarily done by an officer of the
JL United States in performance of his duty and in pursuance of the
law of the United States is not an offense against the laws of any state,&dquo; foot-
noted to In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1 (1890)/ has come into contact only with
the tiny visible part of a legal iceberg whose nether portions contain one of
the strangest tales in American legal history. In re Neagle was one of the last
episodes in a long saga of dueling, assault, voodoo, litigation, and attempted
assassination that stretched over more than thirty years of the nineteenth
century. Individually, many of the episodes are not unique, but taken to-
gether and played by a cast of characters that includes United States sena-
tors, chief justices of the California Supreme Court, and an associate justice
of the United States Supreme Court, they compose a tale difficult to match.
When David Smith Terry opened a law office in Stockton, California, in
1849, at the age of twenty-six, he had already had an eventful life. His
mother had moved the family from Kentucky to Texas when David was a
small child. The boy was precocious, both physically and mentally, and was
sufficiently adult at the age of thirteen to participate in the battle of San
Jacinto. He read law for a few years and was admitted to the bar in Texas
in 1845. The next year he was fighting in Mexico with the Texas Rangers.
Violence of one sort or another marked most of his life, but David Terry
was well equipped for a violent life, having a quick mind and a six-foot-
three-inch body that usually scaled over 220 pounds. Newspaper and per-
sonal accounts record several assaults by David Terry between 1849 and
1855, usually with a knife, but also with an axe and even an inkpot. His
election to the California Supreme Court in 1855 hardly slowed the pace of
violence. In 1856, Terry stabbed Sterling A. Hopkins on a downtown street
of San Francisco and was tried for this and other assaults and convicted by
the Vigilance Committee, the sentence being an unheeded request that he
resign from the Supreme Court.2 Had Hopkins not survived, Terry almost
certainly would have been hanged. The tolerant attitude of a frontier Cali-
fornia toward violence made it possible for David Terry to become the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court in 1859, but Terry did not hold the job very
long. He resigned the same year in order to fight a duel with United States
Senator David C. Broderick, who was killed in the affray.3
3
(The cause of
1
Also cited as Cunningham v. Neagle.
2
David Smith Terry, Defendant: Trial of David S. Terry by the Committee of Vigilance
(San Francisco: R. C. Moore, Printers, 1856), p. 73.
3
John Currey, The Terry-Broderick Duel (Washington, D.C., 1896).
948

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949
the duel was the intemperate language of both participants, brought on by
bitter political differences over the slavery issue.) The hatred the duel
aroused in Broderick’s friends dogged Terry’s footsteps for the rest of his
life and probably had a great deal to do with Terry’s defeat for Presidential
Elector in 1880.4 Between 1859 and 1884, Terry spent some time in Virginia
City and the Washoe, practiced law in Stockton, fought with the Con,fed-
eracy, and spent four years in Mexico as a cotton planter, during which time
he was offered a military command by the Emperor Maximilian. There was
much more to David Terry’s character than the hot temper and proclivity
for violence which play such an important part in the present story. He
was
a devoted husband and father; a good lawyer and judge; and a steadfast
friend. He was also something of a statesman; the highlight of his career was
probably his outstanding performance at the California Constitutional Con-
vention of 1878-79, where he succeeded in mitigating much of the rancor
caused by the killing of Braderick.5 All these experiences seem now to have
been only a preparation for Terry’s encounter with the second actor in the
vendetta.
Although David Terry was magnificently qualified for the job, he prob-
ably cannot be considered the leading character in this tale. This position of
eminence he must yield to a woman twenty-five years his junior, Sarah
Althea Hill, born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1848 and an ~migr~ to
San Francisco in 1870. Sarah Althea came of a substantial family, some of
whom were living in San Francisco by the time she arrived; but Allie was
one of the roving kind. The newspapers described her as &dquo;lovely,&dquo; &dquo;beauti-
ful,&dquo; and even &dquo;exotic,&dquo; but contemporary pictures and drawings of her
lead one to believe that newspapers were as prone then as they are now to
describe every young woman who figures in the news as &dquo;beautiful&dquo; or &dquo;at-
tractive,&dquo; apparently on the theory that the reading public is not interested
in what happens to the plain ones. Sarah Althea was not ugly and usually
dressed well and stylishly. She certainly had something that attracted men.
During her first ten years in California, she had many suitors, even a few
fianc6s, and was well known around San Francisco as an available party
girl. She bestowed her favors, but apparently not without compensation.
Sarah Althea acquired a reputation as a free spender and as somewhat of an
expert in the stock market. There is no doubt that she was clever.
Not long after Sarah Althea Hill’s arrival in San Francisco, she renewed
an acquaintance begun when Sarah was a child in Cape Girardeau. The
object of Sarah’s friendship was Mary Elizabeth Pleasant, usually known as
Mammy Pleasant, whose reputation as a voodoo priestess, madam, and
4
A. Russell Buchanan, David S. Terry of California (San Marino: Huntington Library,
1956), p. 191.
5
There are two Terry biographies: Buchanan, op. cit., and A. E. Wagstaff (ed.), Life of
David S. Terry (San Francisco: Continental Pub. Co., 1892).

---

950
possessor of sinister holds over some of the leading families of San Francisco,
or at least the husbands, established her as one of the best-known figures in
the city.6 It is not entirely clear how much of Sarah Althea’s career was
guided by this scheming old woman, but it is certain that Mammy Pleasant
had great influence over her young friend and played an important part in
some phases of the violent events to follow.
During the latter part of the year 1880, Sarah Althea Hill became the
mistress of William Sharon, United States Senator from the state of Nevada
and one of the richest men in the west. Sharon’s wife had died some years
before. The Senator’s financial interests were scattered over the country
but were managed from San Francisco, where the Senator spent most of his
time. The Sharon empire comprised several hotels, including the Palace,
several banks, including the Bank of California, and a wide variety of min-
ing and other corporate enterprises, the method of acquisition of which was
somewhat questionable and the cause of much litigation and public condem-
nation.7 Sharon’s income by 1883 was reputed to be in excess of $100,000 a
month. Sarah Althea Hill was established by Sharon in a suite in the Grand
Hotel, also owned by Sharon, across New Montgomery Street from the
Palace, the Senator’s usual San Francisco residence. The two hotels were
connected by a bridge over the street. During the period of slightly more
than a year that the liaison lasted, Sharon paid Sarah Althea $500 a month
and gave her other amounts at various ’times. He also wrote numerous notes
and letters containing the salutations &dquo;Dear Allie&dquo; and &dquo;Dear Miss Hill,&dquo;
an indiscretion the Senator was later to regret. The relationship was stormy
toward the end, especially after Sharon tried to break it off. On December
6, 1881, he finally had the ardent lady evicted from the suite in the Grand
Hotel (but only after the carpets had been ripped from the floor and the
doors taken from their hinges) and gave her $7,500 in cash and notes in
exchange for which Sarah Althea signed a receipt marked &dquo;paid in full.&dquo;
(Sarah Althea later claimed that she had loaned the Senator $7,500 to in-
vest for her in the stock market and that this was just a repayment of the
loan, a claim that was not supported by the condition of her bank account
at the time of the alleged loan.) For two years after the eviction the lady
wrote frequent letters to her ex-lover asking him to take her back, but to
no avail. Sarah Althea was not putting all her hopes in an unlikely recon-
...