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Wednesday July 14, 1915
Trinidad, Colorado - John Lawson Denied New Trial, Denied Bond, Taken to Jail
John R. Lawson, International Board Member from District 15 of the U. M. W. of A.
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THE court has asked me what, if anything, I have to say why sentence should not now be pronounced against me.
During two days of argument on that very question, through which I listened, not in a personal way, but so far as possible as a citizen of our common country, I had supposed that many and unanswerable reasons supporting my view had been given to the court.
Therefore, in the court's interest at this moment I must recognize a mere formality. It is plain that nothing I can say will change your fixed determination so far as you have the power to start me down the dark path of imprisonment for life.
IT is proper that a man so situated, especially when, as in my case, he is the victim without fault of an utterly unscrupulous persecution, should be permitted to enter his protest against injustice, however much that protest may appear weakened by its relation to individual experience.
Fortunately, what I have to say is warranted by bigger considerations than any personal to me. So far-reaching are they that I feel I have a right to ask you to hear my views with the same courtesy I have used during my trial through your rulings and remarks.
About to be condemned by you to prison for life, I will, therefore, make answer to your question in the following way:
FIRST of all, in the name of the courts of my country, which I respect, I protest against your right of power to pass any judgment against me. It is undenied in this case that you were appointed to the bench this spring for the trial of myself and my associates, fresh from the employment of the very coal operators of Colorado and the country, including the Rockefellers, who have pressed and engineered these prosecutions.
Yourself a coal company attorney, engaged to assist as a practicing lawyer in the trial of cases arising like mine out of the industrial disturbances of 1913 and 1914, you had no right, when challenged, to sit as trial judge in the case of any striking miner,
YOU were so deeply prejudiced against me that my care was a travesty on justice from the start. Notwithstanding the affidavits of reliable citizens who have sworn to your prejudice, you have persisted on the bench. Today the Supreme Court of Colorado in Denver is reviewing your conduct, and yet you refuse to wait another twenty-four hours for the guidance of that court's decision. Such unseemly haste in the exercise of such a jurisdiction to thrust me into prison should not be passed without a protest.
Second only to the resolution with which you hold your seat upon the bench was the method adopted by you for selecting a jury to try me. You refused to permit the jury to be drawn from the regular jury box provided by law, and you ordered an open venire.
This method was exactly adapted to procure what none were surprised to discover—a hand-picked jury of coal company partisans. After you had removed the coroner as a summoning officer, over my protest, you selected your own instruments to pick this jury. And the jury so chosen was naturally subject to the self-same coal company influences which with hue and cry now seek to drive me to the penitentiary.
IT matters not that I was utterly guiltless of the charge against me. It matters not that the prosecution was forced to abandon its claim that on October 25, 1913, I fired a shot or did other than seek to avoid the violence which menaced the cause dearest to my heart.
It matters not that it became necessary for the prosecution to invoke legal doctrines of conspiracy, which, if applied impartially, would convict the leading coal operators of Colorado and the country for the deaths of men, women and children at Ludlow on April 20, 1914.
Perhaps this seemed immaterial, because none of them have been informed against, much less tried, and none of them fear our courts or prosecuting officials.
It matters not that the only evidence, on which the prosecution was forced to rest, was the testimony of two disreputable Baldwin-Felts detectives, employes of the coal operators' association, with whom you yourself were formerly professionally associated.
Nothing was to be permitted to stand in the way, and it is significant that even a jury so selected refused to convict me until a bailiff selected by you, according to affidavits on file in this court, tortured a juryman with manufactured reports of the dangerous illness of the juror's wife, and as a final stroke warned the jury that under your orders the jury would have nothing further to eat until they rendered their verdict.
IN the face of this sworn charge, which courts everywhere have held sufficient to undermine the whole structure of jury trials and to destroy the integrity of such a verdict, your bailiff has remained silent and this court impassive. May I ask whether judicial travesty is not the right description of such proceedings?
Such practices, however, astonishing to our people in general, do not surprise one who has observed our industrial history. From long experience I recognize the power of wealth, the magnitude of our industrial problems and their effect on our existing social system. I can understand, for I have seen how men who seek a living realization for the workers of the world of the old ideals of justice and equality; who endeavor to open the eyes of their fellows to the true economic conditions that surround them as they seek their daily bread, are persecuted, defamed and even, in exceptional instances, hounded to the gallows by those who control the wealth and privileges of our generous country.
I HAVE seen some masters of finance within and with out this state using the full powers of government to divide the workers, to crush the hopes and aspirations in their breasts, and to extinguish the kindling light of intelligence in their souls in full realization of the fact that understanding brings the fixed desire for the higher and nobler things of life, including a dream of equality of opportunity some day for the children of rich and poor alike.
And it is not overstatement to say that I am here to day because, with others, I have patiently, without bitterness, yet persistently, for years sought these things—a wider chance in life for those who toil, a higher type of democratic citizenship and a social system of industry which gives promise to mankind and denies autocratic power over the lives and liberties of the great mass of workers to the masters of millions who have usurped governmental authority itself.
SUCH usurpation has reached its most finished expression in Las Animas and Huerfano counties, in this state, and those who, like myself, have continued none the less to worship at the ancient altars of human liberty and justice in this country have been marked for annihilation.
But let no one think we have not seen through years this very possibility.
In receiving sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor from this court I can do so with the knowledge that I have broken no law and committed no crime, unless it be that I am a coal miner, honored by my fellow workers, with their years of confident faith that my devotion will stand even this acid test for the maintenance of their principles.
IN a word, the reason this court should not pass judgment as I see it is that by so doing it will openly violate every principle of justice for the promotion of which our courts exist.
Solemnly facing iron bars and prison walls, I assert my love for justice and my faith in its ultimate triumph—not a justice of theory, but of reality extending to men, women and children whose proper equality of opportunity it embraces; and with utmost earnestness I want it understood that my one satisfaction in my lot—separated though I be from those who are dearer to me than life—lies in the belief that this, my undeserved experience, may help awaken others to the living wrongs in our world, calling today as definitely as in the past for remedy.
It is a privilege and a duty even by sacrifice to advance our priceless cause. I am therefore ready to receive the sentence this court should declare itself without either authority, right or justification to impose.
[Photograph added.]
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