Eternity Street Page 3
The trial commenced the following morning, Saturday, November 26, 1854, with the examination of the prosecution’s star witness, the Indian girl Innocencia, granted immunity in exchange for her testimony. With her account and Alvitre’s confession, the state’s case was open and shut, and Thom rested by midday. Dryden declined to put his client on the stand, so both attorneys made their closing arguments that afternoon. Thom simply reiterated the evidence, but Dryden, alternating between English and Spanish, delivered an emotional appeal focusing on the violent circumstances of Alvitre’s upbringing. Jury deliberations began late in the afternoon, and after less than an hour the twelve men delivered a verdict of guilty. Hayes scheduled sentencing for the following Monday and spent his Sunday afternoon working on an address to the prisoner.
Completing his second year as elected district judge, Benjamin Hayes was at the center of efforts to strengthen the county’s justice system. Although slight in stature, Hayes projected a fierce determination with his piercing steel-blue gaze. Thanks to Mayor Foster’s pledge, Alvitre’s trial had become a key test, and the remarks Hayes prepared for the sentencing were so conceived. He intended his address to Alvitre, he noted in his diary, “for the benefit of his young countrymen, who are betraying too many signs of hostility to Americans.” Hayes wrote in fluent Spanish but was embarrassed by his poor pronunciation, so before the crowded courtroom on Monday he delivered his address in English, pausing after each paragraph for translation by the court interpreter.
“It is truly worthy of pity,” Hayes began, “that one so young would be capable of perpetrating such a bloody and horrible crime.” Alvitre’s acts were those of a person “hardened and calloused like a stone, without a spark of humanity in his chest.” Why had he killed James Ellington? “¡Porqué era Americano!” That had been Alvitre’s answer. “Why this terrible hatred of Americans?” True, as his attorney had argued, Alvitre had grown up during “tumultuous times.” He had been taught to think of violence as the appropriate response to conflict. But none of that mitigated his crime.
Hayes admitted that “too many have fallen into this hatred, under the influence of evil counsel, or perhaps because of small causes, abuses they have suffered, or because their elders have not instructed them in proper conduct.” But the time had come to put bitter feelings aside and “learn the ways of peace—to become one and the same family, because we now all live under the same constitution and laws, and our interests and obligations are identical.” What the ailing community required was the balm of righteous justice, which only the rule of law made possible. “The law protects all members of the community equally, whether American or not, and punishes the criminal with equal penalties according to the offense, no matter his country, his color, or his race.” The trial itself, said Hayes, offered strong evidence of the law’s impartiality. The proceedings had been conducted with the utmost fairness, and a jury of Alvitre’s peers, half of them Californios, had found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This was what justice looked like.
Hayes expected attorney Dryden to appeal the conviction to California’s Supreme Court. “I will set the day of execution with sufficient time that the Court can consider the case.” But, Hayes said, this was a mere formality, and he cautioned Alvitre not to be deceived. “I beg you not to foster illusions of hope, thinking you may escape justice,” he told the young man. “I firmly believe everything was done right here. The sentence I will pronounce is not in my name, but in the name of the law, and the sentence will be carried out without fail.” Then, after counseling the prisoner to spend his remaining days in prayerful contrition and penitence, Hayes formally delivered the sentence. “It is the judgment of this court that you, Felipe Alvitre, be returned to the County Jail of Los Angeles, to remain there until Friday, the 12th of January, on which day at 3 P.M. you will be taken to the place appointed for your execution, and there you shall be hanged by the neck until your life is extinguished. Y que Dios tenga misericordia en vuestra alma. And may God have mercy on your soul.”
David Brown’s trial began that same afternoon. To defend him Brown’s friends had retained Jonathan R. Scott, Judge Hayes’s former law partner, acknowledged to be the best defense attorney in Los Angeles. Scott immediately moved for a change of venue, charging that the local press had embittered the public mind against his client. He pointed to the remarks of editor John Ozias Wheeler in the weekly Southern Californian of Los Angeles, instructing “every officer of the court” to heed the people’s demand for justice. “Should Brown be released,” Wheeler had written, “we would not vouch for the consequences.” After conducting a hearing on the matter, Hayes denied Scott’s motion, ruling that while the “tone of the press” was unfortunate there was not a shred of evidence that the views of the county’s residents had been tainted. Scott continued to press the issue of prejudice, closely questioning prospective jurors and rejecting a number for cause. But by Tuesday afternoon a jury of nine Americans and three Californios had been seated.
The trial itself commenced and concluded the following day. There were several eyewitnesses to the crime, so the state’s case was easily made. The jury retired in midafternoon and quickly returned with a verdict of guilty. Hayes pronounced sentence the following morning. In this instance, he felt no need for a lengthy statement from the bench, but he reinforced his argument about equality under the law by setting Brown’s execution for the same day and time in January as Alvitre’s. Hayes was proud of the accomplishment. Despite the threat of a lynching on the night of Brown’s arrest, the system had been allowed to work, with Brown “duly tried and convicted.”
“THERE IS NO ROOM left for cavil or doubt,” editor James S. Waite, a staunch Democrat, wrote in the Los Angeles Star, “either as to the integrity of our courts, or to the determination of various officials to do all in their power to secure the ends of justice without fear or favor.” In the rival Southern Californian, John Wheeler, a Whig and soon-to-be Republican, wrote that “the District Court has set an example. . . . We hope the convictions, and the certainty of an ignominious death, will forever hereafter have a tendency to put a stop to the reckless habits of many of the young men of our community.”
The hopeful rhetoric ended on January 4, 1855, when the steamer from the north arrived with an official stay of execution for David Brown signed by Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray of the California Supreme Court. Suspending the execution of a condemned American while proceeding with the execution of a condemned Californio fed the worst suspicions of the Spanish-speaking majority. “So Alvitre is to be hanged alone,” wrote Francisco P. Ramírez, young editor of the Spanish-language section of the Star. He could hardly believe it. “If Brown’s case was appealed, why not Alvitre’s? Are not both equally guilty?” In the English-language pages of the same issue, editor Waite echoed the frustration of his young colleague. “There has been quite an excitement among the native Californians,” he reported. “They say if Brown is worthy of a reprieve and a new trial, Alvitre is also entitled to the same.” Waite believed they were right. Caution should be the watchword of the hour. Neither man should be hanged until the confusing circumstances were clarified.
Editor Wheeler did not share Waite’s qualms. A Connecticut Yankee, he held strong beliefs regarding racial and ethnic justice. There could be only one reason why Brown had received a stay and Alvitre had not, he declared. “One happens to be an American, the other a Californian.” Wheeler was also an enthusiastic vigilante, and he embraced the rhetoric of incitement. “Citizens of Los Angeles, it is for you to say whether this gross and outrageous partiality shall be allowed; whether you will permit so flagrant and glaring an evidence of the omnipotence of birth and conditions to operate in widening still further the breach that already exists between our native and foreign population, so prolific of future disaster to this community, . . . which we may all live to regret—perhaps in blood and tears.”
On Thursday, January 11, the evening before the scheduled execution, a mass meeting
of several hundred Angelenos, the majority of them Californios, adopted a resolution demanding that both Alvitre and Brown “be executed at the same time and on the same drop.” A committee of three, delegated to meet with Sheriff Barton, found him in his office about midnight. If he did not agree to execute Brown, they explained, the residents of Los Angeles would mount a violent assault on the jail and hang him themselves. But Barton would not agree, insisting that he would follow the order of the court. Felipe Alvitre would hang, David Brown would not. “The Sheriff is determined to do his duty in carrying out the law at all hazards, having yesterday made his will and prepared himself for every emergency,” the Southern Californian reported in an unusual extra edition rushed out the following morning. “Some fifteen or twenty men are prepared to stand by him to the death.”
IN THE STANDARD TELLING, Los Angeles history begins with the first stirrings of the modern metropolis in the late nineteenth century. The city’s earlier years are recalled, if recalled at all, as part of a familiar frontier narrative. Los Angeles, the mother of all western cow towns, flourishing a quarter century before the halcyon days of Dodge City, Kansas. Raucous saloons and gambling houses teeming with crowds of Indians and Californios, Mexicans and Americans. Violent men ambling down dusty streets, armed with Colt’s revolvers and Bowie knives. Sheriffs and judges contending with vigilance committees and lynch mobs as well as rustlers and highwaymen. But a closer look reveals those characters acting in unexpected ways. A newspaper editor advocating lynch law in the name of racial justice, and hundreds of Spanish-speaking Californios massing to attack the county jail, determined to lynch an Anglo hooligan from Texas.
’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
To fully tell this story—the triumph of a culture of violence in the struggle between official and outlaw justice—return to the origins of frontier Los Angeles. Fashioned not once but twice by violent conquest and occupation. Conceived in an assault of native homelands by men marching under the banner of heaven, then torn asunder by invaders pursuing their “manifest destiny to overspread the continent.” With a diverse mix of peoples linked in relations of dominance and subordination. With structures of order so weak and ineffective that even the most enlightened men came to rely on mob rule and lynch law. What was the possibility for justice in such a place?
Murder and mayhem in edenic southern California. John A. Lewis, founding editor of the Star, was struck by the contradiction in 1853.
There is no brighter sun, no milder clime, no more equable temperature, no scenes more picturesque, no greener valleys, no fairer plains in the wide world, than those we may look upon here. There is no country where nature is more lavish of her exuberant fullness; and yet, with all our natural beauties and advantages, there is no country where human life is of so little account. Men hack one another to pieces with pistols and other cutlery as if God’s image were of no more worth than the life of one of the two or three thousand ownerless dogs that prowl about our streets and make night hideous.
LA noir avant la lettre. This self-crafted narrative, drawn from direct experience, is one of the oldest stories Angelenos tell about themselves.
PART ONE
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CHAPTER 1 •
A PEOPLE ANGRY AND ARMED
IN 1836, when Los Angeles was under the jurisdiction of the Mexican republic, Angelenos organized the pueblo’s first comité de vigilancia and carried out an extralegal execution in response to the murder of a fellow citizen. News of the incident spread rapidly through California. The governor, outraged at this gross circumvention of legal procedure, threatened the vigilantes with jail or worse. But in the end no action was taken against them. Indeed, the spokesman for the vigilantes became an aide to Juan Bautista Alvarado, a Californio from Monterey who later that same year led a political revolt against Mexican authority and was chosen by his fellow revolutionaries to be their new governor. Alvarado heaped praise on the Los Angeles vigilantes, arguing that their independent spirit had inspired his movement, inaugurating what he called “a new era in California history.”
According to Alvarado, the people were “like a sleeping lion,” peaceful and contented in slumber, but fierce and unconquerable if rudely awakened. When red tape or corruption prevented the prompt punishment of vicious criminals, he counted on the people to rise up. Justica popular, he declared, was something he had always supported. By the time Alvarado expressed those views, in the memoirs he dictated in 1876, near the end of his life, the roar of popular justice had been heard hundreds of times in California, resulting in the excution by vigilance committees or mobs of nearly three hundred individuals, more than fifty in Los Angeles County alone.
The man whose murder provoked that first episode of lynch law in Los Angeles was José Domingo Féliz, a Californio born in 1805 at Mission San Gabriel and raised to manhood in the family adobe at Rancho Los Féliz, where the foothills slide down to the Los Angeles River, known then as the Río Porciúncula. In those days Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside was a hardscrabble place, home to several thousand Indians and a few hundred Spanish-speaking settlers. In 1829, at the age of twenty-three, Don Domingo married María del Rosario Villa, familiarly known as Charo, the fourteen-year-old daughter of an upstanding family. During the first three years of their marriage she bore two children, both of whom died in infancy. After that there were no more births. Trouble had developed between husband and wife, and in 1834, after five years of marriage, nineteen-year-old Charo left Rancho Los Féliz and took up with Gervasio Alipás, a Californio who worked at Rancho Los Alamitos on the coast, thirty miles south. Her husband had driven her away with his philandering, she explained to friends. But the claim generated little sympathy. Men might be sexual aggressors, but wives, nonetheless, had to be submissive. Yet Charo flaunted her relationship with Alipás, marking her as a chingada, a whore, in the eyes of the community.
For nearly two years Don Domingo tried to persuade his wife to return. But she scorned him and delighted in humiliating him in the presence of her lover. On one such occasion, at a tavern in the rural community of Los Nietos, the two men came to blows. Alipás was a thickset vaquero, or cowboy, virile and vigorous, Féliz a slight caballero, or gentleman, afflicted with a pronounced limp, the result of a childhood injury for which he acquired the cruel nickname of “el güilo,” the gimp. To the surprise of everyone present, however, before they were pulled apart it was Don Domingo who drew first blood. Alipás swore to have his revenge.
Divorce was not permitted under Mexican law. Civil authorities were empowered to compel husband and wife to live together “como Díos manda,” as God commands. Reaching the limit of his patience, in the early spring of 1836 Féliz sought and received a warrant from Alcalde Manuel Requena, chief civil officer of the pueblo, authorizing him to bring his fugitive wife home. Early on the morning of March 24, accompanied by his brother Antonio, Féliz rode to Mission San Gabriel and presented the warrant to the mission’s civil administrator. It was the mission’s annual feast day, featuring food, acrobatic performances, and plenty of dancing. Féliz expected his errant wife and her cowboy lover to be there, and it pained him to think of them parading his shame before the community. He found her alone—Alipás had not yet arrived—and despite her resistance he and his brother forced her to accompany them back to the pueblo. On their way they were overtaken by Dámaso Alipás, brother of Charo’s lover. Several years earlier the Alipás brothers had participated in a revolt that overthrew the Mexican governor, and they enjoyed a reputation for reckless violence. But seeing that it was two against one, Dámaso contented himself with making an obscene gesture and shouting a threat: “¡Hoy las Féliz mueres!” Today the Félizes die!
Not long thereafter the Féliz brothers arrived at the Los Angeles home of their maternal aunt, Marí
a Luisa Cota de López, widow of the late mayordomo of Mission San Gabriel, a woman celebrated for her hospitality as well as her cooking. She greeted Charo with open arms and prepared a sumptuous feast in honor of “the lost lamb who has been found.” Don Domingo’s father, Francisco Féliz, joined them for the meal, which proceeded with surprising equanimity. In the meantime, Gervasio Alipás had arrived at the neighboring adobe, which belonged to his uncle, and that evening he managed to signal his presence to Charo. At midnight, supposing everyone was asleep, she attempted to leave the house but was stopped by her father-in-law. In a fateful decision, Don Francisco chose not to mention the incident to his son.
The following morning the estranged couple visited with Assistant Alcalde Tiburcio Tapia, a wealthy merchant and ranchero who resided in a townhouse facing the Plaza. Tapia scolded Charo for her scandalous conduct, but he urged Don Domingo to forgive her, advising the couple to patch up their differences and reestablish domestic “peace and harmony.” Both pledged to do their best and departed together. As they made their way back to Doña Luisa’s, they were watched by Alipás, who was lurking in the shadows of an adjacent garden. He returned to his uncle’s house in an ugly mood. Pulling a large knife from his boot, he began to sharpen it on a whetstone, mumbling to himself that he would “make a party for Charo and her gimp.”
Early the next day Don Domingo made preparations to depart with his wife for Rancho Los Féliz, some eight miles upriver. Brother Antonio had to run an errand, and fearful of an assault by the Alipás brothers he requested that Don Domingo wait for his return that they might ride together. But as soon as Don Antonio departed Charo began to pester her husband. “Why wait for your brother? I suppose you’re afraid, but what can happen? Let’s go.” Doña Luisa urged them to linger over a leisurely breakfast, but indulging his wife, Don Domingo harnessed his mare, looped his sash over the pommel of his saddle to form a makeshift stirrup, and lifting his wife into position, seated himself behind on the mare’s rump, a common way for young married couples to ride. Doña Luisa bid them goodbye as they headed off. She watched as her nephew removed his sombrero and gallantly waved farewell. She saw him place the hat on his wife’s head to protect her from the morning sun. She noted the silk bandana tied about the crown of his head in the fashion of the day. The details long remained vivid for her, since it was the last time she saw her nephew alive.