CELEBRITY TRIAL AT THE HUNTSVILLE COURT HOUSE………..

 

In 1881, Bill Ryan, Jesse and Frank James robbed an Army Paymaster on the outskirts of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.   Ryan fled, but was arrested for a bar-room confrontation and ego-tripping altercation that got him apprehended. He soon implicated the James Brothers, and initiated the string of consequences that fell from his carelessness and basic stupidity....This marked the end of the James' reign of notoriety,  Jesse's assassination,  as well as a long prison term for Bill Ryan....Frank James, on April 17, 1884, appeared in the Huntsville Court House, entered the courtroom accompanied by his wife, young son, and an all-star legal team headed by veteran Huntsville lawyer, Leroy Pope Walker (who also happened to be the former Secretary of War for the Confederacy).  The prosecution was headed up by the formidable William H. Smith, US Attorney and a former governor of Alabama during Reconstruction.  The courtroom theatre-piece went on in the manner of O.J. Simpson's notorious trial....and the arch-criminal "popstar" Frank James was acquitted and released into the streets of Huntsville.... [he had also been acquitted of the only other crime that he was brought to trial for......in Missouri].  The Baptist preacher's son lived his life out, rather unspectacularly, as a burlesque show ticket-taker, tour guide of his notorious family's home and department store shoe salesman.....In parallel,  the Huntsville Court House which then occupied the block on Green Street between Eustis and Randolph Street, was demolished in 1954..... to be replaced by a parking lot.   "O quam cito transit gloria mundi"




    All Is Well by Hans Christian