The Haymarket Trial Jury

The Haymarket Trial Jury — Names and Backgrounds

This is a great question that gets into the granular historical record. The jury composition was heavily documented precisely because it became central to the appeals and the later pardons. Here is what the historical record tells us.

The Twelve Jurors

The names of the jurors are recorded, though detailed biographical information on all of them varies in depth:

Key Observations About the Panel

Occupational uniformity was striking and deliberate. Nearly every juror was either a clerk, a salesman, a bookkeeper, or a business agent — white collar occupations almost exclusively. There was:

• Not a single industrial worker
• Not a single immigrant represented
• No one from the working class neighborhoods where the defendants lived and organized
• A heavy representation of men whose livelihoods depended on the commercial and business establishment

In 1886 Chicago, which was roughly 40 percent foreign-born, having zero immigrant representation on a jury trying men who were largely German immigrants was a remarkable and deliberate outcome of the jury selection process.

William Ryce — The Most Controversial Juror

William Ryce was the juror most scrutinized during appeals. He was a clerk, and crucially:

• He was related to Henry L. Ryce, the special bailiff appointed by Judge Gary to assemble the jury pool itself
• Henry Ryce was reported to have told acquaintances while assembling the pool that he would ensure the defendants were hanged
• Having a relative of the jury pool's own architect sitting on the jury was an extraordinary conflict of interest
• During voir dire William Ryce admitted to having formed opinions about the case but was seated anyway

The relationship between William and Henry Ryce and exactly how close it was has been debated by historians — some sources describe them as cousins, others as more distant relatives — but the connection was documented and cited explicitly in Governor Altgeld's pardon message.

Henry L. Ryce — The Bailiff

Though not a juror himself, Henry Ryce deserves particular attention because he was arguably more consequential than any individual juror:

• He was appointed as the special bailiff specifically tasked with summoning potential jurors
• Witnesses reported him saying words to the effect of "I am managing this case and these fellows will hang as sure as death"
• He allegedly handpicked men he knew to be predisposed toward conviction
• His conduct was cited by defense attorneys during the trial and formed a cornerstone of the appeals

Governor Altgeld specifically named Henry Ryce in his pardon document, calling his conduct a fundamental corruption of the jury selection process.

Otis Favor — A Notable Figure

Otis Favor served as jury foreman and was a commercial traveler — essentially a traveling salesman for a business house. He was:

• Solidly middle class and commercially oriented
• Reported to have been among the most vocal for conviction during deliberations
• Interviewed by journalists after the verdict, he defended the outcome forcefully
• He later became something of a minor public figure simply by virtue of having foreman the most famous trial of the era

James Brayton — The Real Estate Connection

James H. Brayton, the real estate agent on the jury, represented the propertied class interests of Chicago quite directly. Real estate men of the era were:

• Deeply invested in social order and property values
• Generally hostile to labor unrest which threatened both
• Part of the commercial establishment that viewed the anarchist defendants with particular alarm

The Voir Dire Process — How They Got Seated

The defense attorneys, primarily William Foster and Moses Salomon (later joined by the more prominent Captain William Black), challenged numerous potential jurors for cause during selection. The record shows:

• Defense used all available peremptory challenges — the limited number of challenges requiring no stated reason
• Many challenges for cause — requiring demonstrated bias — were denied by Judge Gary
• Potential jurors who openly stated they believed the defendants were probably guilty were seated over defense objection
• The process took an unusually long three weeks — a sign of how contentious the selection was

One exchange during voir dire became particularly notorious. A potential juror stated words to the effect that he had formed an opinion that the defendants were guilty and doubted he could be impartial. Judge Gary asked if he could nonetheless decide the case on the evidence presented. The man said he supposed he could try. Gary seated him.

The Defense Team's Protests

Captain William Black, who became the lead defense attorney, was a respected Civil War veteran and lawyer who took the case at considerable personal and professional risk. He documented the jury selection abuses meticulously:

• Filed detailed objections during trial
• Raised the jury composition prominently in appeals
• His arguments about the fundamental unfairness of the selection process formed much of the legal architecture of the appeals, even though the courts ultimately rejected them

Black genuinely believed in his clients' innocence — or at minimum their right to a fair trial — and the case took a visible personal toll on him.

The Prosecution Team

For completeness, the men on the other side of the courtroom are worth naming:

Julius Grinnell — State's Attorney for Cook County, the lead prosecutor. Ambitious, politically connected, and openly hostile to anarchism. He framed the case explicitly as civilization versus chaos, and his closing argument was described as more of a political speech than a legal summation. He later became a judge.

Francis Walker and Edmund Furthmann assisted Grinnell at the prosecution table.

What Altgeld Said About the Jury Specifically

When Governor Altgeld issued his pardon in 1893, he devoted considerable space specifically to the jury question. His key points were:

• The special bailiff Henry Ryce had corrupted the selection process at its root
• The jurors seated had demonstrated bias that should have disqualified them
• Judge Gary had abused his discretion in overruling defense challenges
• The composition of the jury — entirely white collar, no immigrants, no workers — made a fair verdict structurally impossible given the nature of the case and the defendants

Altgeld was careful and legalistic in his pardon message — he wasn't writing a polemic but a formal legal document, and his methodical dismantling of the jury process was one of its most powerful sections.

The Broader Historical Significance

The Haymarket jury became an early and prominent example in American legal history of what scholars would later call "death qualification" and systematic exclusion — the process by which jury pools in high-stakes cases are shaped to produce predetermined outcomes through seemingly procedural means.

It would take decades — really until the mid-20th century and the Warren Court's expansion of due process protections — before federal constitutional standards for jury selection became robust enough to prevent the most egregious abuses seen in the Haymarket trial. And even then, as later cases would demonstrate, the gap between formal legal standards and courtroom reality remained wide.