Harry Innes

Harry Innes (January 4, 1752 – September 20, 1816) was a Virginia lawyer and patriot during the American Revolutionary War who became a local judge and prosecutor as well as helped establish the state of Kentucky, before he accepted appointment as United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kentucky and served until his death.

Early and family life

Born on January 4, 1752, in Caroline County, Colony of Virginia, British America, to the former Catherine Richards and the Rev. Robert Innes. His father had graduated from Oxford University before emigrating from Scotland to the Virginia colony, and accepted a position as rector (Anglican clergyman) in Caroline County. Innes received a private education locally at Donald Robertson's school, then traveled to the colonial capital, Williamsburg to attend the College of William & Mary, where he read law beginning in 1772 with George Wythe. His younger brother James Innes (1754–1798) would follow him at William and Mary, but would be dismissed from the college in 1775 for leading a band of students who blocked Governor Dunmore's agents from removing military stores to ships offshore.

Career Admitted to the Virginia bar when he reached legal age in 1773,

Harry Innes would soon travel the Wilderness Road over the Cumberland Gap and seek his fortune in what had been called Kentucky County until being split into three sparsely settled counties in 1780. In the fall of 1782, Virginia's legislature elected Innes as an Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature for the District of Kentucky.

Conflict with Humphrey Marshall Former U.S. senator Humphrey Marshall was a long-time detractor of Innes. Marshall claimed that Innes was involved in James Wilkinson's "Spanish Conspiracy", in which Wilkinson was alleged (and later proven) to have served as a spy for the Spanish government and attempted to annex Kentucky to Spain; Innes had served as a witness in the impeachment trial of state appellate judge Benjamin Sebastian, who was receiving a pension from King Charles IV of Spain, and Marshall viewed Innes as being incriminated in this case.

In response to Marshall's attacks on Innes in the Franklin Western World newspaper, Innes sued Marshall (in the Mercer Circuit Court) and World cofounder Joseph M. Street (in the Jessamine Circuit Court) for libel, with Henry Clay serving as Innes' counsel. In 1808, congressman John Rowan, on behalf of Marshall (then a state representative), filed an impeachment resolution against Innes, which went nowhere; Innes' son-in-law, state representative Thomas Bodley, retaliated by seeking a censure of Marshall, which was successful and resulted in Marshall being expelled from the state house, although he was reelected once more in 1809. Innes and his allies contributed to a book by William Litrell on the Spanish conspiracy, and Humphrey subsequently issued History of Kentucky in 1812, which included attacks on Innes.

A verdict was reached in the case against Street in 1811, with Innes being awarded $750 in damages which he refused to collect as he did not want his case to appear financially motivated; Street subsequently shuttered the World and moved to Illinois. Street returned in 1814 to testify in the case against Marshall, resulting in Innes issuing a writ for Street to pay the $750 in his earlier libel case; Street was unable to and was imprisoned. The case against Marshall ended in a hung jury in 1814, and the following year, Innes and Marshall settled the case on the condition that neither would slander the other. They had one child, Maria, who married John Harris Todd, and after his death, John J. Crittenden. They also raised a daughter from Ann's first marriage.

Death and legacy On September 20, 1816, Judge Innes died in Frankfort, Kentucky, survived by his widow and several children and a stepdaughter.