Reminisce: Judge Everett and the Dillinger gang trial

The Spring of 1934 arrived in a winter coat. Outside the Allen County Courthouse on March 23 flurries fluttered in a biting wind that belied the fact it was the first Saturday of spring. Inside, on the third floor of the courthouse, Judge Emmit E. Everett delivered the final lines in a gripping drama that began on an October evening six months earlier with the slaying of Allen County Sheriff Jess Sarber and the freeing of notorious gangster John Dillinger from the county jail.

“A court has two most solemn duties,” Everett told Harry Pierpont, the man convicted of gunning down Sarber during the jail break. “One is the imposition of a sentence that takes from a person his liberty, and second, the more solemn one that takes from a person his life. This court is required by law when a jury returns such a verdict to sentence a defendant to pay the supreme penalty of death.”

Everett then sentenced Pierpont, described in the News as the “brazen six-foot triggerman,” to die in the electric chair at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. Pierpont accomplice Charles Makeley, a native of St. Marys, dubbed the “short and rotund clubber” for his role in the killing, received the same sentence a short time later. Another accomplice, Russell Clark, was sentenced to life in prison.

With rumors rampant that Dillinger, who had escaped from an Indiana jail just days before the Lima trials began, would attempt to spring his cohorts, security was heavy. Guards armed with shotguns and machine guns ringed the courthouse and patrolmen accompanied Everett and other court officials. Through it all, Everett was unflappable and earned praise for the even-handed way in which he presided over the trials. Later, defense appeals based on his rulings during the trials were quickly overturned.

Although Everett is most often remembered for his role in the Dillinger gang trials, his rulings a year earlier on foreclosure suits and the citizenship oath had already brought him widespread repute and respect.

Everett was born May 21, 1876, in Monroe Township to Jasper and Margaret Reeder Everett. The family, according to the News, was “of pioneer stock” and lived in the same residence for more than a century. He attended the district schools of Monroe Township, graduated from the Lutheran College in Lima in 1900, and received his law degree from Ohio State University.

On August 26, 1900, in what the Lima Times-Democrat described as “a quiet but happy nuptial event” at Trinity Church, Everett married Gracia Crum, the daughter of Henry G. and Isabell Myers Crum, of Seneca County. Everett, the newspaper wrote, “is now superintendent of the public schools at Farmersville” in Montgomery County. Everett also taught in Allen County schools and at a state reform school in Iowa.

“He was admitted to the bar in December 1904, began the practice of law at Lima in May 1905, and practiced in Lima and vicinity until he became common pleas judge, November 10, 1930, having been elected to fill the unexpired term of Judge Fred C. Becker, who resigned to become Lima’s city manager,” the News wrote in October 1932. Everett also served two terms as a justice of the peace, holding the position from 1908 to 1916.

In 1932, two years after winning the election to finish Becker’s term, Everett, a Democrat, was running for a full term on the court. “Justice Everett has given his entire time and attention to the trial of cases and the discharge of his official duties,” the News wrote in October 1932. “He holds the view that cases should be tried promptly, that a public office holder is a public servant, and that justice should be administered always in an honest, fair, fearless, unprejudiced and charitable manner.”

Everett’s mettle would be tested by a busy docket and weighty issues.

In September 1932, John Peter Klassen and his wife, Anna, appeared before Everett for a naturalization hearing. Klassen, a Mennonite and native of Russia who was teaching art at Bluffton College, refused to take the complete oath of allegiance to the United States, declaring his faith was opposed to the use of arms. Everett rejected the citizenship petition.

Four months later, in February 1933, Klassen appeared before Everett to appeal the decision. “It is not a question of serving this country in time of war,” Klassen said at the appeal, according to the News. “My religion and my conscience would permit me to serve in any way except the actual bearing of arms.”

Although Klassen remained steadfast, Everett had changed his mind. Ignoring precedent set in two previous U.S. Supreme Court cases and citing his belief international disputes in the future would be decided in courts “without bearing arms,” Everett instructed the clerk of courts to administer the oath of allegiance “with the reservation that he will serve in all non-combatant service in defense of the United States government.”

Everett’s decision was praised in newspapers and magazines across the country and in England — and by the operator of a Lima cab company, who wrote in a letter published in the News that it “bristles with common sense.” Everett’s “common-sense” decision eventually led to a change in the oath taken by applicants for citizenship, allowing them to perform non-combatant service.

At about the same time, Everett issued a ruling which would have widespread impact in a time during which court dockets were choked with farm and residential foreclosure suits brought on by the Great Depression.

“Judge E.E. Everett wrote a new chapter in Allen County history Saturday when he announced home and farm owners in foreclosure suits would be granted 90 days in which to pay judgments,” the News reported February 5, 1933. The judge, the newspaper added, “further explained that such delays in foreclosures will be long enough to await final decision of the (Ohio) legislature, which now is considering enactment of a measure which would grant more time for redemptions.” The state legislature passed a mortgage moratorium at the end of March 1933.

Everett lost his re-election bid during a Republican landslide in November 1938 and left office in February 1939. “Few men retire from public life so firmly situated in popular esteem as you were upon stepping down from the Allen County common pleas court bench last week,” the News wrote February 17, 1939. “You have achieved recognition as the highest type of judicial integrity, with a record of decisions many of which have made legal history and evoked nationwide comment.”

Everett, however, was not quite through with public life. In May 1939, he was selected by Ohio Gov. John W. Bricker as the Democratic member of the newly created state parole board. “A student of probation and paroles Mr. Everett’s appointment, endorsed by many local friends high in the ranks of the Republican party indicates the esteem in which the former common pleas judge is held by members of the opposite political faith,” the News wrote in a May 9, 1939, editorial. Everett served on the parole board until March 1947.

Everett died on June 14, 1950, at the age of 74. His wife, Gracia, preceded him in death, passing away August 23, 1949. He was survived by sons Howard, who was a lawyer like his father, and Paul, who was a machinist at Lennox Furnace Co.

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SOURCE

This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.

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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce

Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].