The Dangerous Duelist Judge Terry And Unfortunate Sarah Hill

Of all Supreme Court Justices that California has had so far, Judge David S. Terry is, despite some stiff competition, the one most likely to end up a villain in a comic book. His judicial career started as a member of the Texas Rangers. While fighting the Mexican-American War, he stopped by Galveston and passed the bar by answering a single question: "Do you know the price of a dish of oysters?" Not only did he know the price of oysters, but he knew that his examiners liked whisky with theirs.

Despite his stellar judicial knowledge, Terry lost a race for Galveston District Attorney in 1845. He was so disappointed that he took twenty of his best friends, also former Rangers, and a few of his slaves, and set out for California, arriving in 1849.

In California, Terry entered politics, needless to say as a Democrat, and did his best to remove the anti-slavery provision from the first Californian constitution. When that failed, he tried to split the state into halves—slave and free. He failed, but his strong defense of slavery earned him a State Supreme Court seat by 1855, with the support of the Know Nothing party^{1MAGA of the nineteenth century, but with secret gestures instead of hats.}.

Terry was six feet three, and always carried a bowie knife in case someone failed to notice his size. His life story can be told as a series of expensive temper tantrums. He paid fifty dollars for stabbing a litigant mid-session, three hundred for assaulting a newspaper editor, and nearly his life for attacking a Vigilante.^{2I do not defend lynchings, but please keep in mind that the official justice at the time was dispensed by David S. Terry, that the other judges were not that much saner than him, that the San Francisco government was about as corrupt as a city government can get, and that the Vigilantes were staunchly anti-slavery.}.

The Vigilantes were worried about a pro-slavery takeover of San Francisco, and felt that a group of former Texas Rangers and committed Democrats should not be going into the city armory at night. That seems like a reasonable stance to me, but Judge Terry took offense to it, and stabbed the committee leader, Sterling Hopkins, in the neck.

Terry was arrested, and received what may have been the longest Lynch trial in history, taking twenty-five days. At the end, as Terry's victim lived, he was sentenced to mere exile from California, and the sentence was not enforced.

Soon afterward, the Chief Justice died, and Terry, as the senior Supreme Court judge, took his seat.

Terry's own seat went to a man forty years younger, one Stephen J. Field. Justice Field celebrated by having a special coat made that allowed him to carry two guns and shoot through his pockets^{3Did you think Terry was unusual? No, California Supreme Court Justices just roll like that.}.

Field has been described as a man of "little-mindedness, meanlinesses, of braggadocio, pusillanimity, and contemptible vanity," and widely disliked as a proponent of unchecked property rights, which he defended under the Due Process clause of the newly-passed Fourteenth Amendment^{4The Fourteenth Amendment states, in part, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." You can see how Justice Field's insistence of using it all the time would really upset Justice Terry, who was sensitive over not being allowed to own people in California. How would it make you feel if your coworkers kept reminding you every day that you aren't allowed to own anyone?}.

Justice Terry did not like the Fourteenth Amendment, and felt that Field's anti-slavery views made him a bad Democrat.

In 1859 Justice Terry was supposed to run for re-election, but the Democratic Convention, led by the anti-slavery Senator Broderick, refused to nominate him. Terry challenged Broderick to a duel^{5California had more lethal duels in the nineteenth century than any other place in the Union, and that's saying something, since for most of the century we weren't even in the Union.} , and won. In a touching gesture of respect for the law, Terry resigned his position on the bench the morning before the duel.

After Broderick's death, Terry returned to private law practice until joining the Confederate army in 1863. Having lost the war, he returned to California and the practice of law. At the 1878 California constitutional convention, he ardently supported women’s rights. In 1879, he authored California's Constitution and helped Clara Foltz win her lawsuit for admission to Hastings Law School (they denied her due to gender).

In 1884, David Terry found his soul mate. She was Sarah Althea Hill, known as "the rose of Sharon" for her association with the millionaire William Sharon.
Sarah Hill claimed they were married. Sharon claimed she was just a kept woman and gave specific amounts. The lawsuits over the control of Sharon's thirty-million-dollar estate continued for years, even after Sharon's death, with Terry representing Hill's interests through ten California Supreme Court decisions, ten federal circuit court decisions, and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Sarah Hill was truly a woman predestined for David Terry. You could tell by the way she attacked an elderly judge — pulling his hair out and beating him. She always carried a pistol, being too ladylike for a bowie knife.

Terry was representing Hill in one of the endless appeals, presided over by Justice Field. Field cast aspersions on Hill's virtue, causing her to call Field "bought" and attack him with a pistol. When court marshals intervened, Terry went to his wife's defense with his bowie knife, and both of them were jailed for contempt of the court. Hill was soon released, but Terry served six months.

This insult could not be borne. The very next time Terry saw Field, he attempted vengeance. There is some disagreement over whether the seventy-seven-year-old Terry struck Field with his fists, or merely slapped him. Field, being an acting California Supreme Court Justice, was protected by an armed U.S. Marshal, one David Neagle. To his credit, Neagle began by asking Terry to stand down, and shot only when Terry ignored him and continued beating Field.

This was Terry's most expensive temper tantrum. He died on the spot.

Neagle was very briefly arrested by California, but taken out by the Federal government on habeas corpus. The resulting Supreme Court case, from which Field recused himself, established the right of the Federal government to assign bodyguards to Supreme Court Justices. Amazingly, two of the justices dissented, wanting their bodyguards to be authorized by the Congress. Field rewarded Neagle for his courage and fidelity with a gold watch.

Sarah Hill went mad and wandered the streets of San Francisco for three or so years, until Mary Ellen Pleasant paid for her to be taken into a psychiatric hospital. Sarah never regained her sanity. She died in the same hospital forty-five years later, on Valentine’s Day, 1937, and is buried next to Terry.

Field went on to dominate the U.S. Supreme Court for thirty-four years, refusing to resign even when senile. He joined the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson, which makes one wish that he had resigned.

To this day, no one knows whether Sarah Hill was legally married to William Sharon.


^{1MAGA of the nineteenth century, but with secret gestures instead of hats.} MAGA of the nineteenth century, but with secret gestures instead of hats.

^{2I do not defend lynchings, but please keep in mind that the official justice at the time was dispensed by David S. Terry, that the other judges were not that much saner than him, that the San Francisco government was about as corrupt as a city government can get, and that the Vigilantes were staunchly anti-slavery.}I do not defend lynchings, but please keep in mind that the official justice at the time was dispensed by David S. Terry, that the other judges were not that much saner than him, that the San Francisco government was about as corrupt as a city government can get, and that the Vigilantes were staunchly anti-slavery.

^{3Did you think Terry was unusual? No, California Supreme Court Justices just roll like that.}Did you think Terry was unusual? No, California Supreme Court Justices just roll like that.

^{4The Fourteenth Amendment states, in part, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." You can see how Justice Field's insistence of using it all the time would really upset Justice Terry, who was sensitive over not being allowed to own people in California. How would it make you feel if your coworkers kept reminding you every day that you aren't allowed to own anyone?}The Fourteenth Amendment states, in part, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." You can see how Justice Field's insistence of using it all the time would really upset Justice Terry, who was sensitive over not being allowed to own people in California. How would it make you feel if your coworkers kept reminding you every day that you aren't allowed to own anyone?

^{5California had more lethal duels in the nineteenth century than any other place in the Union, and that's saying something, since for most of the century we weren't even in the Union.} California had more lethal duels in the nineteenth century than any other place in the Union, and that's saying something, since for most of the century we weren't even in the Union.