The Trial of the Sheep Herder
A legal dispute over grazing rights in Sunnyside escalates into a dramatic courtroom spectacle involving out-of-town lawyers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Friday of last week was a gala day for Prosser. For the first time in its history it had a legal trial in which real live lawyers were employed. Levi Vacher, who herds sheep for Mr. Weston, drove his flock onto the lands of a Mr. Cochran. Jim Cochran ordered Vacher to move on and undertook to enforce his demand by hitting the herder over the head with a revolver. This resulted in his arrest and trial before Justice of the Peace Burrell on the charge of assault. At the end of the day, it was decided to call in those eminent legal lights, J. G. Boyle of North Yakima, for the prosecution, and D. H. Carey of Ellensburg, for the defense. Upon their arrival, the complaint was changed from simple assault to assault with a deadly weapon. Poetry mixed with Blackstone was fired and countered until the scintillations of wit, humor and pathos, as they clashed with the more ponderous lore of the law, actually dazzled the townspeople. Boyle gained his point, and the assaulting party was bound over in the sum of $200 for his appearance at the next regular term of the superior court.
“Poetry mixed with Blackstone was fired and countered until the scintillations of wit, humor and pathos, as they clashed with the more ponderous lore of the law, actually dazzled the townspeople.”
Conflicts over land use and grazing rights remain a staple of rural Washington politics. While the theatrical courtroom style of the 1890s has faded, the tension between agricultural neighbors over property boundaries persists in the Yakima Valley.
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