guilty of these atrocious crimes.Yet White knew that America’s judicial institutions, like its
policing agencies, were permeated with corruption. Many lawyers
and judges were on the take. Witnesses were coerced, juries
tampered with. Even Clarence Darrow, the great defender of the
downtrodden, had been charged with trying to bribe prospective
jurors. A Los Angeles Times editor recalled Darrow once telling
him, “When you’re up against a bunch of crooks you will have to
play their game. Why shouldn’t I?” Hale held enormous influence
over Oklahoma’s fragile legal institutions; as a reporter who
visited the region noted, “Townspeople, from low to high, speak of
him with bated breath. His influence and that of his associates is
felt everywhere.”
Because of Hale’s power, a federal prosecutor warned that it was
“not only useless but positively dangerous” to try him in the state
legal system. But, as with many crimes against American Indians,
the question of which government entity had jurisdiction over the
Osage murders was confounding. If a murder occurred on Indian
territory, then the federal authorities could claim jurisdiction. The
Osage territory, however, had been allotted, and much of the
surface land where the murders had occurred, including the
slaying of Anna Brown, was no longer under the tribe’s control.
These cases, Justice Department officials concluded, could only be
tried by the state.
Yet, as officials scoured the various cases, they thought that
they’d found an exception. Henry Roan was killed on an Osage
allotment that hadn’t been sold to whites; moreover, the Osage
property owner was under guardianship and considered a ward of
the federal government. Prosecutors working with White decided
to move forward with this case first, and Hale and Ramsey were
charged in federal court with Roan’s murder. They faced the death