Carroll Cook (January 15, 1855 – January 8, 1915) was an attorney and judge for the

Superior Court In common law systems, a superior court is a court of general jurisdiction over civil and criminal legal cases. A superior court is "superior" in relation to a court with limited jurisdiction (see small claims court), which is restricted to civil ...

in San Francisco. He was best known for the national attention drawn to some of his rulings in famous cases, several of which were upheld by the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

Cases

Judge Cook, in the case of

Cordelia Botkin Cordelia Botkin (1854 – March 7, 1910) was an American murderer who sent a box of poisoned candy to her ex-lover's wife. This was the first American prosecution for a crime which took place in two different jurisdictions, as Botkin had sent the ...

, made the first decision for a crime committed in two different states,

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

and

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The defendant received a life sentence, a ruling upheld by the United States Supreme Court. In a case known as the "Gas Pipe Thugs" Judge Cook sentenced a defendant who

pleaded guilty In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a criminal case under common law using the adversarial system. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a defendant at arraignment, or otherwise in response ...

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...

without a jury trial, a sentence that the

Appellate Court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

upheld. He also sentenced to death the medical student,

Theodore Durrant William Henry Theodore Durrant (1871 – January 7, 1898), known as "The Demon of the Belfry", was hanged for two murders committed at San Francisco's Emmanuel Baptist Church, where he was assistant superintendent of the Sunday School. He maint ...

, who was convicted in November 1895, for the

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

of two young women nine days apart in a church. These became known as the "belfry murders". The defendant unsuccessfully appealed his sentence repeatedly during the three years before his eventual hanging in 1898. Carroll also presided over the 1908 trial of

Jang In-hwan Jang In-hwan (March 30, 1875 – April 24, 1930) was a Korean independence activist. He is best known along with Jeon Myeong-un for his role in the 1908 assassination of Durham Stevens, a former diplomat and Japan lobbyist. Incident Jang, ...

for the murder of former diplomat

Durham Stevens Durham White Stevens (February 1, 1851 – March 25, 1908) was an American diplomat and later an employee of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working for the Japanese colonial office in Korea, the Resident-General. He was fatally shot by Kor ...

. As an attorney, Cook defended John McNulty, on his appeal of his death penalty sentence, for whom the

gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...

was erected eight separate times. Cook stayed the execution and, taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, had the sentence reduced to six years in prison. Carroll Cook died in San Francisco on January 8, 1915.

Footnotes

1855 births 1915 deaths California state court judges Lawyers from San Francisco 19th-century American judges {{California-state-judge-stub