William Borah - Career

Career

After practicing law in Lyons, Kansas, Borah headed for Seattle in 1890, but only had fare at the time to get to Idaho, with plans to work and move on. He decided to stay in the growing capital city of Boise, where he became the most prominent attorney in the new state. Borah once wrote a letter to the Board of Pardons protesting the change of sentence in hanging "Diamondfield Jack" Davis, a man charged with killing a sheepherder who was working for a cattle company.

Borah ran for the U.S. Senate in 1902, but was defeated in the Idaho Legislature by Weldon B. Heyburn, a Republican attorney from Wallace. In 1907, shortly after being elected to the Senate, Borah served as the prosecuting attorney in the nationally publicized trial of "Big Bill" Haywood and two other labor union officials for the 1905 murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow defended Haywood.

In 1907, a Federal grand jury indicted him for conspiracy to defraud the United States by procuring timberlands through fraudulent means. At the time he was the attorney for the Barber Lumber Company. The trial of the case was deferred until the conclusion of the Haywood case.

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