Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The First Attempted Assassination of a US Supreme Court Justice
Justice Stephen J. Field, 1875.
Is the recent aborted assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by an individual upset with the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade the first such attempt in US history? Searching around, it turns out that the answer to that question is no. There has been at least one other attempt on the life of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. In that case, however, the attempt had nothing to do with either the politics or the judicial philosophy of the justice. This, despite the fact that the assassin was a well-known politician and jurist.
On August 14, 1889, David S. Terry attacked United States Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field at a busy California railroad station dining room and was shot and killed by Deputy US Marshal David Neagle. It was the second encounter between this trio, the first having taken place almost a year earlier and also violent.
Stephen Johnson Field (1816-1899) was born in Haddam, CT, one of nine children of David Dudley Field, a Congregationalist minister, and Submit Dickinson. Several of his siblings achieved national prominence, the most notable being Cyrus Field who helped lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He graduated from Williams College, read the law with an Albany lawyer, was admitted to the New York bar, and practiced law with one of his brothers in New York City for about a decade before traveling to California in the immediate aftermath of the California Gold Rush.
In California, Field continued his legal career and participated in state and local politics winning elections as a small-town mayor and as a state legislator. In 1859, he replaced David S. Terry (yes that David S. Terry) as Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court when the latter left the state in a hurry after killing US Senator David C. Broderick in a duel. Terry and Broderick were both Democrats but Broderick was a free soil Democrat while Terry was pro-slavery which was the proximate cause of their feud and eventual fatal duel.
In 1863, President Lincoln nominated Field to fill a new tenth seat on the Supreme Court as per the recently enacted Tenth Circuit Act of 1863. Field was a Democrat but of the free-soil variety which was Lincoln’s principal concern. During the ongoing war, he wanted justices who would be most likely to uphold the actions he might take in the prosecution of the war. Field joined the court in 1863 and would serve on the court until December 1897 when he retired as the longest-serving member in court history although he was senile during the last several years of his tenure.
David S. Terry.
When Field was on the court, part of the duties of each justice was to “ride circuit” in one of the federal circuit courts. Field’s circuit was the Ninth Federal Circuit Court which included California. It was in this role he and Terry would meet again.
David S. Terry (1823-1889) was born in Kentucky but his family moved to southeast Texas when he was a young boy and he lived there until he traveled to California early on during their Gold Rush. In California, he read the law, was admitted to the bar, practiced law, and was active in state and local politics. He won election to the State Supreme Court in 1855 but as noted above left the state after the fatal duel with Broderick. During the Civil War, he fought for the Confederacy in several Texas cavalry units rising to the rank of Colonel. After the war, he went to Mexico to live but eventually returned to the United States and California.
He resumed the practice of law and in the mid-1880s got entangled in a major public scandal. A young woman named Sarah Althea Hill (1850-1937) had been the kept mistress of US Senator William Sharon. When Sharon tried to end their affair, Hill, with Terry as her attorney, claimed she was his wife; they had secretly married. She produced a marriage contract and sued him for adultery. The senator asserted the contract was fraudulent and legal proceedings ensued. Sharon died in the middle of this which led Hill to produce a handwritten will in which Sharon willed her his entire substantial estate (he was a millionaire). She said she had found the will in his desk. The Sharon family disputed this claim and the lawsuits marched forward.
Sarah Althea Hill
It was at the end of these trials that Justice Field got involved in this issue. Sitting on a three-judge panel, Field in September 1888 ruled the will was a forgery, at which time chaos ensued. Hill, the wife of Terry since 1886, rose, yelled obscenities at Field, and tried to fish her small revolver from her handbag only to be subdued by US Marshals at which point Terry, all 6’3″ and 250 pounds of him, pulled the ever present Bowie knife from his coat and went after the Marshals but was brought under control by a number of Marshals, including Neagle, all pointing their guns at him. As a consequence, Field sentenced the pair to jail for contempt of court.
Terry and Hill continued to threaten Field’s life, so US Marshal J.C. Franks assigned a Deputy Marshal, David Neagle, to act as Field’s bodyguard when he rode circuit. The next year, in August 1889, Field and Neagle were traveling by train from Los Angeles (where Field had just finished hearing cases) to San Francisco (where Field would hear more cases). Terry and Hill got on the same train in Fresno (unbeknownst to both parties). The train stopped for breakfast at the Lathrop, CA, station, which had a large dining hall. Field and Neagle were sitting at a table eating their breakfast when Terry spotted Field. He strode toward Field, slapped him several times, and began to reach in his coat for his Bowie Knife. Neagle rose and told Terry to stop. Terry refused to stop and Neagle shot him through the heart killing him.
Neagle was arrested by the local sheriff and charged with murder. The subsequent case did not get decided until the Supreme Court weighed in in the 1890 case In re Neagle in which the court decided in a 6-2 verdict (Field abstained) that federal officers are immune from State prosecution when acting within the scope of their federal authority.
Attorney David Terry attacking US Marshals at the 1888 Hill-Sharon Trial.
David Terry and US Marshal at Lathrop Dining Hall, August 14, 1889.
As opposed to the Kavanaugh assassination attempt, the attempt on Field’s life received plenty of attention from the national press. To be fair though, it’s a much juicier story.
Published in General
An interesting bit of history and so well told.
The type of thing a Nineteenth Century “Enquirer” would have put down in print every step of the way. (Not sure if there was a rag like the Enquirer back in the day.)
Thanks Carol.
Duty to retreat?
Interesting story. I hadn’t known that Supreme Court justices were still doing circuit court at that late date. Now I’m curious as to when that practice stopped.
It’s good that there was no Nancy Pelosi to step in and stop the U.S. Marshalls from providing protection.
I believe the circuit court arrangement lasted until 1912.
Thinking about this circuit court arrangement further, I think the Supreme Court justices would’ve hated it, especially before the US developed a decent railroad network. Before then travel would have been terribly arduous and miserable – muddy roads in wet weather, dusty roads in dry weather, rutted and bumpy all the time with poor accommodations in terms of places to stay and places to eat outside of the larger cities and towns.
Maybe it was a form of term limitation, though. You had to be young and healthy enough to be a Supreme Court Justice.
Nowadays it would involve too much contact with the grubby, run-of-the-mill citizens.
It is hinted that that is why congress for a long time didn’t do away with it.
Where was the attempt to assassinate Kavanaugh?
A sick man came out with that intent, thought better of it, and got psychiatric help. The Justice was never in danger.
This was not an attempted assassination. It was an intended assassination. Pardon my being pernickety, but those are really different things.
Are we to charge Mr Roske with thought crimes?