The Justice and the Lady

ROBERT KRONINGER

Copyright 1976, Supreme Court Historical Society
from the Yearbook 1977 Supreme Court Historical Society

San Franciscans during the gilded era of the 1880's were entertained by a spectacular and mystifying divorce suit against one of the city's richest men. William Sharon, Comstock mining multimillionaire, owner of the Palace and Grand Hotels, entertainer of royalty, and former United States Senator from Nevada, was generally thought to be a widower, who avoided loneliness with a succession of young companions. Suddenly there appeared the beautiful Sarah Althea Hill, claiming rights as his wife. She had a purported contract bearing what appeared to be his signature. Charging him with adultery, she sought a divorce.

This action was to spawn a great tangle of state and federal legal complications throughout the decade. As one segment of the larger story, Sarah's concern for her honor as a lady was to precipitate a constitutional teapot tempest. But she was little more than the final catalyst. The explosive brew had been simmering for three decades in the malevolently intertwining lives and passions of two brilliant but irascible men of the West, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field and former state judge David S. Terry.

Both men had been trained in the law but were drawn to California by the gold fever of 1849, Field from New England, and Terry from the South. Stephen J. Field, on his arrival in California, was almost immediately elected alcalde, or judge, of the town of Marysville, which he helped to found at the foot of the Sierras. By his own account, he amassed over $100,000 in less than six months in that office. With the state's admission to the Union in 1850 another man was made judge of the Marysville district, to Field's chagrin. Field soon found himself in contempt of court and disbarred by his successor. He quickly got the rulings set aside on appeal but, not satisfied, he sought election to the state's legislature and there attempted to have the new judge removed from office. In the process, Field became embroiled in a challenge to a duel and a few days later was the object of an attempted saloon ambush. David Broderick, a fellow member of the legislature, consented to be his second in the contemplated but never- consummated duel and was his protector in foiling the ambush. Thus Field was doubly indebted to Broderick.

Terry, seven years Field's junior, was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1855 and became its Chief Justice two years later at the age of 34. Field joined him on the Court in that year, Terry as Chief Justice swearing him into office.

Field, Terry and Broderick were all Democrats. But the tensions leading to the Civil War were keenly felt in California, whose people had come from widely disparate backgrounds. The party developed a bitter schism, out of which arose strong personal animosity between the Terry and Broderick factions. Determined to settle the matter according to the code by which he had been raised, Terry resigned his position as the state's highest judicial officer and two days later challenged Broderick, then United States Senator from California, to a duel. At dawn on September 13, 1859, amid sand dunes and cypresses, the two met beside a small lake on the outskirts of San Francisco. They faced each other, each gripping a pistol, and both fired. Broderick fell, mortally wounded.

Terry had avenged his honor according to his code, but had permanently damaged his reputation and career. He had also gained the enduring enmity of Stephen Field. Some years later Field was to write, "I could never forget his [Broderick's] generous conduct to me; and for his sad death there was no more sincere mourner in the state." Three decades later Field was to prove how truly he meant it.

Ironically, Field reaped a substantial windfall from Terry's quarrel with Broderick. Upon Terry's resignation, Field was made Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. And, four years later in 1863 when the United States Supreme Court was expanded from nine to ten members, Field, as Chief Justice of the burgeoning West's largest state, was President Lincoln's natural choice to fill the post. He ultimately served longer than any other man before or since (until the recent conclusion of William 0. Douglas' tenure) and was therefore still on the United States Supreme Court twenty-five years after his appointment when in 1888 one convolution of Sarah's litigation with Senator Sharon came before the federal Circuit Court in San Francisco.

Terry had conducted a lucrative law practice since resigning his high judicial office, and as Sarah Althea Hill's divorce case beat its tortuous path through state and federal courts he became one of her attorneys. Senator Sharon, Sarah's alleged husband, had died meanwhile, and Terry, as captivated by Sarah's charms as were most men, married her. Thereafter as her attorney and as her husband he championed Sarah's cause and defended her honor against the claim that she had merely been another in the Senator's long succession of mistresses.

By one of the many quirks of fate in the long litigation, Field, riding circuit as a member of the United States Supreme Court, was to preside at one of the most important hearings in the case. Before that date came, however, the lives of Terry and Field were to undergo several more rasping crossings.

The Civil War had settled the free soil-slavery issue. But the completion of the transcontinental railroad provided an issue which perpetuated the split in the Democratic party in California. Rate manipulation and land speculation by rail monopolists brought quick disillusionment to Western farmers and merchants. Terry became one of the most vocal of those who felt that the West's survival required regulation of the railroads.

Field, on the other hand, announced early in his judicial career his subsequently unswerving belief that "property is as sacred as the laws of God." He was rarely known to render a decision against the railroads. When the federal government undertook to regulate them he argued for states' rights. When states attempted to tax or regulate railroads he argued that, being engaged in interstate commerce, they were amenable only to the federal government. His close association with railroad magnates and their attorneys was much criticized. Reporting one of his decisions, the San Francisco Chronicle said, "Justice Field has peculiar opinions regarding the Constitution, which, if they cannot be said to be his own, are certainly those of certain interests in whose cause he is engaged." The Senator's attorneys in the Sharon divorce litigation were almost all prominent railroad lawyers, while Terry, Sarah's advocate and husband, was an outspoken opponent of the railroads.

Presidential aspirations helped define the battle lines. In 1880, Field, most political of Supreme Court Justices, unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1884, as the Sharon divorce litigation was getting under full steam, he again sought the nomination, attempting first to gain the endorsement of his own California delegation. But despite determined efforts by a number of wealthy friends, including several of Senator Sharon's attorneys, he was repudiated by a vote of 453 to 19. Prominent among his opponents were Terry and his law associates. Reportedly, Field thereafter carried in his hat a list of the several hundred California "communists," as he characterized them, who had frustrated his ambitions, tirelessly seeking revenge even to the extent of importuning President Cleveland to deny petty post masterships to their friends and relatives.

With this background, the Circuit Court room in San Francisco's old Appraiser's Building was crowded on the morning of September 3, 1888, to hear the court's decision on an important federal aspect of the by-then notorious Sharon divorce case. Justice Field, in California on circuit, read the decision. It involved exhaustive legal argument, but Sarah Althea Terry, seated at the counsel table with her husband and attorney, understood all too well the effect of Field's words: She was being ordered to turn over to the court, for cancellation, the marriage contract.

She interrupted Field's reading of his decision to ask, "Are you going to take it upon yourself to order me to give up that contract?"

Field, momentarily disconcerted, finally said, "Sit down, madam."

"I will . . .," she began, apparently intending to get in one last word, but Field interrupted.

"Marshal, put that woman out!" he directed U. S. Marshal J. C. Franks.

"Judge Field, how much have you been paid for that decision? I know it was bought," Sarah cried as the marshal strode toward her.

"Marshal, put that woman out," Field repeated evenly.

No one but Sarah seemed perturbed. Some spectators in the back of the courtroom stood up to gain a better view. Terry, still seated at the counsel table, told the marshal to stand back. "Don't put a finger on my wife," he warned, adding that he would take her out himself, some witnesses later said.

The marshal hesitated, then attempted to push past. Terry jumped to his feet and struck him in the face. As the marshal fell to the floor, deputies, assisted by several attorneys and spectators, leaped on Terry, threw him to the floor, and pinned his arms down when he appeared to be trying to get his hand inside his coat. Sarah tried to rescue Terry, asking a bystander to hold her reticule. After being buffeted to the floor she was drawn to her feet and led away.

"Let me go," said Terry, ceasing his struggle as Sarah left. "I only want to accompany my wife and I'll go quietly." Released, he turned and walked out of the courtroom, straightening his clothing. The deputy marshals fell back. Half of those in attendance pushed out after Terry.

During the entire brief affair neither Field nor his associates had visibly reacted. After a sip of water, Field finished reading his decision without change of tone or demeanor.

Sarah was taken to the marshal's anteroom off the corridor adjacent to the courtroom. Terry followed and, finding the door barred by a deputy, drew a bowie knife. The fighting resumed and a bystander named David Neagle wrenched the knife from Terry while he was held by several deputies. An order came from the courtroom to place both Sarah and Terry under arrest, and marshals easily executed the order by permitting Terry to join Sarah, after which the door was placed under guard.

They were held in the anteroom for several hours. Terry was heard to ask, "My Dear, why did you bring on all this trouble?" She replied that her case and the corruption of the court "must at all cost be kept before the public." Transcontinental newswires were soon humming as they had not been since the days of the divorce trial itself, four years earlier.

Field ordered court reconvened that afternoon to consider what should be done about the morning's altercation. Sarah and Terry were not brought into court, only learning of the proceeding at its conclusion, when reporters were admitted to the anteroom to interview them. They told Terry that Sarah had been sentenced to thirty days in the Alameda County jail, across the bay in Oakland. "I'll go with you," said Terry, gently stroking her cheek. He would indeed, as he was then told he had been sentenced to six months.

Later that afternoon Sarah and Terry were ferried across the bay to jail in Oakland. Permitted to share a cell, they often received friends and gifts of flowers and fruit, and both seemed to be in good spirits throughout the month of Sarah's stay. At the completion of her term she hired a room nearby. She continued to spend long hours with Terry, for whom time now began to drag.

Friends suggested that Terry petition Field for remission of the sentence. They probably remembered that Field himself as an attorney had avoided punishment under similar circumstances in 1850 when he had successfully urged that a judge should not use a contempt order to vindicate his own character. Terry loathed the role of supplicant and doubted its success, in view of their longstanding mutual antipathy. Nevertheless, he did prepare an affidavit disclaiming any intention of disrespect. As he had feared, Field saw no analogy with his own 1850 experience. Terry's penance was used to scourge him further. Field ordered that Terry serve the entire six months, for the conduct was too offensive to be purged by mere apology.

Terry occupied himself in reading, legal research and writing on various pending aspects of the cases, meanwhile brooding on the injustices of which he felt Field guilty. He continued to joke with visitors, but also uttered threats toward Field. Many of these found their way to Washington. The Justice remarked that Terry was "under great excitement and unless he cools down before his term of imprisonment is finished, he may attempt to wreak bodily vengeance upon the judges and officers of the court." He said he would not be deterred by Terry from doing his duty.

Both federal and state criminal law provided for time off for good behavior, amounting to cancellation of five days per month of one's sentence. Terry was a federal prisoner but he was in a state jail, and Federal Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, Field's protege (toady, some said), decreed that Terry was therefore ineligible for credit under either law. He served the complete term to the last hour. The full six months, Field predicted, would give Terry time to "cool down." If Field actually believed it would achieve that purpose, he did not know Terry.

Field returned to California that summer to sit on federal cases in the Ninth Circuit, with a bodyguard ordered by U.S. Attorney General William H. Miller as a result of Terry's various threats. U.S. Marshal Franks in San Francisco gave David Neagle the assignment.

Neagle had tried his hand at a number of occupations with indifferent success. He had been a migratory mine worker, a saloon operator and police chief in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, where he ran unsuccessfully for sheriff. He then drifted on to Montana Territory, before returning to San Francisco in 1883. There he became active in politics and was soon appointed deputy sheriff. While on city business, September 3, 1888, he had chanced to enter the Appraiser's Building just in time to disarm Terry in the melee of that day. His valor in that encounter earned him the role as Field's bodyguard.

Field held court in Los Angeles in early August, and on the evening of the 13th entrained, with Neagle at his side, to return to San Francisco. Always apprised of Terry's whereabouts, Neagle knew that he and Sarah had been at their home near Fresno. Consequently he stayed up to see the train through its Fresno stop. As he stood talking with the train conductor in the shadow of Field's sleeping-car, he noticed Sarah and Terry boarding a day coach a few cars away. They were required to appear in Federal Court in San Francisco the next morning on pending criminal charges arising out of the court incident the previous year. Neagle reported the new passengers to the judge. Field instructed him not to be rash, but said that if any incident took place he wanted to be protected at all hazards.

Early the next morning the train stopped for breakfast at Lathrop, near Stockton, as Field completed his morning toilet. Neagle suggested that he eat at the buffet on board the train but Field insisted that he had had good breakfasts in the station dining room and preferred to eat there. Neagle shrugged and followed him into the dining room, where the two men took a table near the middle of the room and seated themselves facing the door.

In a few minutes they saw David Terry enter with Sarah. She wheeled in the doorway and returned to the train. The dining room operator, who knew Terry, escorted him to a table near one corner of the room, and asked if he thought his wife planned anything desperate.

"Why?" asked Terry. "Who is here?" Seeing Field, he said, "Well, you had better go and watch her." He sat for a moment, then rose and with deliberation walked to Field's table. The restaurateur, at the door to intercept Sarah on her return, watched helplessly as Terry stopped and paused behind Field's chair while Neagle eyed him warily. Standing in back of Field at one side, Terry leaned over him and struck him twice--lightly, the restaurateur said later--on the cheek with the back of his hand, or with a clenched fist, depending on the observer.

Neagle immediately jumped up, wheeled, and drew a revolver. Thrusting its barrel against Terry's chest at the heart, he fired. Terry stood motionless for a moment; then his legs began to give way. As he fell, Neagle fired again, at his head.

Most of the restaurant's guests were unaware of the identity of the participants in silence, the room erupted in great confusion. the violence. After a moment's shocked Some tried to leave while others began to crowd around Terry's body. A bystander mechanically straightened a leg which was bent under it. Terry was obviously dead.

Some of the dining room guests tentatively moved toward Neagle to restrain him. He backed against a wall and, fanning his gun at the hundred-odd people still in the room, declared that he was an officer of the United States and no one should touch him.

Sarah arrived at that moment, tore her way through the cluster of people standing around Terry and dropped to the floor at his side. Ignoring the great mass of blood she cradled his head in her lap. Alternately she caressed and kissed his face, moaning, "Oh, my darling! Oh, my sweetheart!" Then she noticed those who stood silently about. "Why don't they hang the man? The cowardly murderer! He was too cowardly to be given a trial, but hired an assassin. They shot him down like a dog in the road. He was the soul of honor."

Sarah was drawn away from Terry's body long enough to permit several men to carry it to a barber shop next door. Her clothing was covered with blood. Running from train to dining room to barber shop, she imploringly accosted first one person, then another. At one moment concerned with Terry, at the next she demanded revenge on his "murderers."

Field and Neagle had withdrawn to their railway carriage and locked the door. Sarah approached it a time or two and Neagle warned that if she was not kept out he would kill her, too. The town constable boarded the train and, pledging impartiality, was permitted to talk with Field and Neagle in their carriage. Lengthy negotiations ensued, the trainmaster acting as arbitrator. They finally agreed that Neagle would submit to detention pending the coroner's inquest. In Lathrop sentiment was already hardening against Neagle, so as a precaution against possible mob violence the train would first proceed to Tracy, the next stop on the way to San Francisco. There Neagle would be removed for delivery to the San Joaquin County sheriff in Stockton, the county seat.

Many who had witnessed the incident felt that Terry had intended the slaps as the first step toward a challenge to a duel. He had several times hinted at such an intention when he was in jail that spring. He had said he would slap Field or twist his nose the next time he saw him. Many assumed that he would have been satisfied merely to humiliate Field. To a man who lived by Terry's code it made no difference whether the challenge resulted in a duel. Exposing a man as a coward was quite as good as killing him.

Others among Terry's acquaintances remembered his background and violent temper. Such a man, goaded by the events of the past year and importuned by Sarah, could easily become desperate enough to kill a man in cold blood, they thought.

Most people felt that Neagle had acted more precipitately than necessary. This impression was reinforced when a search of Terry's clothing revealed that he had been unarmed. And when it was learned that Field had not been scheduled to travel to California on circuit that year, but had intended to spend the summer in Europe, changing his plans only after a delegation of well-intentioned friends told him of Terry's grumbling and cautioned him against coming to California, some even charged that Field had deliberately created the incident.

The Lathrop constable took Neagle from the train at Tracy and delivered him to the sheriff in Stockton, while Field proceeded to San Francisco. The Stockton district attorney was incensed upon learning that Field had not been arrested, asserting that every person, "no matter how exalted his position and not excluding the President of the United States," must be amenable to the criminal laws. He vowed to go personally to San Francisco, if necessary, to arrest Field.

Every daily newspaper in the country carried accounts of the killing. It provided grist for editorials descrying a wide variety of moral truths. The New York Herald interviewed a number of "Washington lawyers" and reported their general feeling to be that Neagle's conduct had been unjustified. They thought it beyond the necessary and reasonable bounds of his authority. "Here in the East," one was quoted as saying, "we look on matters of this sort in a different light from that in which they are seen by people west of the Rocky Mountains. Out there they kill a man and explain or apologize afterward."

Most papers, particularly in the Midwest, emphasized Terry's life of violence and arrogance toward law. However questionable the particular circumstances under which he met his death, such a man could expect to die as he had lived, they felt. The New York Star saw in his death "a useful lesson," that even in the West a man may not go through life lawlessly with impunity. The New York Sun declared that David Broderick was after thirty years avenged. The paper did not intimate, if it knew, how appropriate was Field's role as avenger.

Sarah signed complaints in Stockton the day after the killing, charging Neagle with murder and Field as an accomplice. With Neagle already in custody, the San Joaquin county sheriff immediately took the train from Stockton to San Francisco to serve the warrant of arrest on Field. Field received the diffident sheriff in his rooms in the Palace Hotel by appointment, urged him to be at his ease, and agreed to accompany him back to Stockton the following afternoon, asking the sheriff to call for him in his court chambers at the Appraiser's Building.

A great crowd had collected in the courtroom and outside the chambers as the hour for Field's surrender arrived the following day. Eyeing the press, Field said to the sheriff, "I am glad to see you, sir, and wish you to perform your duty." The sheriff hesitated, intimidated as much by the large audience as by Field. "Because I may be a judge," Field encouraged him, "I am not excused from the proper processes of law. Judges should be all the more amenable to the laws which they are selected to maintain."

The sheriff mumbled that it was an unpleasant duty he had to perform.

"I am in your custody," prompted Field. Satisfied that form had been honored, Field immediately called Circuit Judge Lorenzo Sawyer's waiting clerk, and handed him a previously prepared petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Judge Sawyer, waiting a few steps away, promptly signed an order, also previously prepared, requiring the sheriff to produce Field before Sawyer forthwith and prohibiting him from taking Field to Stockton. The United States District Attorney offered to prepare a written response for the sheriff so that the matter could proceed quickly yet legally. Everyone waited briefly while he prepared a return consisting simply of an admission that Field had been placed under arrest. The trustful sheriff signed it, assuming that someone present must know what was taking place.

Judge Sawyer then set the following Thursday for the hearing of Field's petition. This meant, as was explained to him a few minutes later, that in the meantime the sheriff could not hold Field nor take him to Stockton for the preliminary hearing which was scheduled to take place in Stockton on Wednesday. The Stockton district attorney was angry when the empty-handed sheriff returned that evening. He was still more incensed upon learning that the sheriff was accompanied by an attorney carrying a writ of habeas corpus to remove Neagle to the jurisdiction of the federal court in San Francisco.

A subscription was well under way in Stockton to provide funds for Neagle's prosecution. Great feeling was immediately aroused at the prospect of having to surrender him without a trial. The subscription committee, attorneys, and citizen groups conferred to discuss the legality and necessity of relinquishing the prisoner. Many simply were disappointed at losing the spectacle of having Neagle prosecuted and punished in their presence. Others saw it as a much larger question of the division of powers between state and federal authorities. What right, asked they, had the federal government to take a man from the custody of state officers while a charge of violating state law was pending against him?

The arguments continued throughout the night, but the disputants might have saved their energy. A special train had been quietly chartered by Neagle's protectors to take him to San Francisco without delay, and in the dead of night it pulled out of the deserted Stockton station. A reporter happened to be at the station while the special train was being made up. He was invited aboard, perhaps to keep him from spreading an untimely alarm, and accompanied the small party to San Francisco. Later he reported that Neagle was in fine spirits and not at all reticent about the killing, relating it as though it had been a bear hunt.

Friends, associates, and federal officials hastened to visit and encourage Neagle in jail in San Francisco, but the general feeling in California was of shock and impotent rage. As far away as New York, the Mercury Sunday in a lengthy editorial demanded that United States Attorney General Miller be immediately arrested and indicted as an accessory to murder.

The hearing in Stockton, with no defendants present, was put off from day to day, awaiting their return. The Governor of California had meanwhile been subjected to much pressure on Field's behalf. He in turn requested the state attorney general to do what he could to halt the prosecution of Field. The Stockton district attorney remained adamant for several days, but finally yielded to the charge that his county and state were being made to appear ridiculous throughout the country and consented to dismiss the case against Field.

When Neagle's habeas corpus hearings finally convened in San Francisco, it was announced that proceedings against Field had been dropped. One of Neagle's six lawyers immediately arose and said they were prepared to waive irregularities and submit directly to a trial of the facts by the federal court. The Stockton district attorney protested that it was the people of Stockton and not Neagle who were complaining of irregularities. He said the state objected to the jurisdiction of the federal court, which he charged had no power to act and no purpose in hearing evidence while the state prosecution was pending.

Judge Sawyer said he wanted to know the facts and would later consider whether he had jurisdiction. The state attorneys thereupon withdrew from the case, declaring that they had never heard of a court considering a case without first determining whether it had power to do so.

Newspapers around the country were now regularly editorializing on the affair. A majority still sided with Field and Neagle but the federal government's intervention caused a great many to join the New York Mercury in expressions of alarm and disapproval. While the general view was still that in meeting his death Terry "married his tragic fate," it was also felt that this cavalier rejection of the state's right to pursue its regular procedure set a baleful precedent.

Neagle's habeas corpus hearing finally began several days later and, though no state attorneys were present to oppose it, the amicable hearing lasted two full weeks. Justice Field, the case against him dismissed, sat in the unused jury box, making of it a sort of reserved spectator's gallery, and sauntered into chambers with Judge Sawyer at each recess. A parade of witnesses testified to Sarah's and Terry's antagonism and threats against Field. The spectators had heard all this many times before, and for a time public interest flagged.

When it was time for Field's testimony, the courtroom was again crowded in anticipation. He walked briskly from the jury box when called and, after a few introductory questions, was permitted to give his testimony in narrative form. He first reviewed his judicial career, recalling that Terry as Chief Justice had sworn him in as associate on the state Supreme Court. He said that by reason of their early association, "No one knew better than Judge Terry that I would resent any personal indignity." Apparently aware of the charge that he had deliberately brought on the confrontation, Field detailed the important cases which had brought him to California that summer. The suspicion was not allayed when he admitted that he had gone to the dining room at Lathrop in the face of Neagle's efforts to dissuade him from leaving the train, adding, "I did not think what he was driving at."

He said he saw Terry rise from his table in the dining room but did not bother to watch him further, being busy eating. The next thing he was aware of was two violent blows to his head. Remaining seated, he looked around to see Terry looming over him with his fist crashing down for a third blow. He said Neagle cried, "Stop! Stop! I am an officer! Stop!"

Two shots followed instantly, Field testified, and Terry fell. "I am firmly convinced that had the marshal delayed two seconds, both he and myself would have been the victim of Terry. It was only a question of seconds whether my life or Judge Terry's life should be taken."

The next day, Neagle testified to a packed courtroom. Reviewing his childhood and early career, he recalled that Terry's exploits of the late 1850's were a common topic of his youthful conversations. He then related the events at Lathrop much as Field had, but curiously their testimony diverged at the most crucial point. Field had said that Terry was in the act of launching another blow at him, his fist crashing down, averted only by Neagle's shots. Neagle now said that he had jumped between the men as Terry was reaching for a knife to attack him. Unfortunately, with no opposing attorneys present to raise embarrassing questions, the spectators were given no explanation of the conflict in the testimony or of the absence of a knife. Both Judge Sawyer and defense counsel were too circumspect to allude to it.

Field and several other witnesses had explained the necessity for Neagle's second shot by saying that Terry appeared to be unaffected by the first. Neagle's attorney, leading him toward the same explanation, asked what had happened after the first shot. Terry started to sink, said Neagle. Though his attorney hastily dropped the subject, Neagle volunteered a few minutes later that he had been shooting to kill.

At the conclusion of testimony, the Stockton district attorney reappeared to argue the federal court's lack of jurisdiction. Pondering the matter for several days, Judge Sawyer then rendered a lengthy decision in which he first declared that the federal court had jurisdiction of the matter and the state had no right to prosecute Neagle. Then, reviewing the testimony, he concluded that, aside from questions of jurisdiction, Neagle's killing of Terry was not merely justified, it was commendable. "Let him be discharged."

Field sprang from the jury box to shake hands with Neagle and, having foreseen the outcome, presented him with a gold watch bearing an engraved inscription reading in part, "With appreciation in great peril."

Neagle was free. Terry was no more. Broderick was avenged. Sarah Althea Terry soon thereafter was committed to the state asylum for the insane, in Stockton, where she spent the remaining forty-five years of her life.

Yearbook 1977 Supreme Court Historical Society