Carroll Cook

Carroll Cook (January 15, 1855 – January 8, 1915)

Cases Judge Cook, in the case of Cordelia Botkin, made the first decision for a crime committed in two different states, Delaware and California. The defendant received a life sentence, a ruling upheld by the United States Supreme Court. In a case known as the "Gas Pipe Thugs" Judge Cook sentenced a defendant who pleaded guilty to hanging without a jury trial, a sentence that the Appellate Court upheld. He also sentenced to death the medical student Theodore Durrant, who was convicted in November 1895 for the murder of two young women nine days apart in a church. These became known as the "belfry murders". The defendant unsuccessfully appealed his sentence repeatedly during the three years before his eventual hanging in 1898.

As an attorney, Cook defended John McNulty, on his appeal of his death penalty sentence, for whom the gallows was erected eight separate times. Cook stayed the execution and, taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, had the sentence reduced to six years in prison.

Carroll Cook died in San Francisco on January 8, 1915.

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