1832-1900
Frederick Smyth was born in Ireland in 1832, the son of a Galway City Sherriff. He emigrated to New York City in 1849 and studied law under John McKeon, who was appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1854. Smyth was admitted to the Bar in 1855 and joined McKeon as an Assistant United States Attorney. In that position, Smyth “became a person of international importance,” prosecuting William Walker, an American mercenary who led unauthorized military expeditions against Mexico (and later briefly installed himself as President of Nicaragua); Sir John Crampton, British Minister to the U.S. and three British Consuls charged with illegally recruiting soldiers for the Crimean war on American soil in violation of the 1794 Neutrality Act; as well as “a bitter and unrelenting war against persons who were engaged in the kidnapping and shipping of sailors.”[1] Upon leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Smyth and McKeon practiced law as partners until 1878.
While Smyth was a Democrat “from the time he became a voter,” he “held aloof from Tammany until the Tweed Ring had been swept out” in the early 1870s.[2] In 1876, he was a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention that nominated Samuel Tilden for President. In November 1875, Smyth, now a declared Tammany man, ran unsuccessfully for the position of Recorder of New York City.[3] He also lost his November 1878 bid to become District Attorney of New York County, and was again defeated the following year when he ran for the Court of Common Pleas.
In December 1879, Smyth was appointed to fill a vacancy in the position of Recorder and elected to a full 14-year term the following November. As Recorder, Judge Smyth presided over more than a dozen high-profile capital murder trials, including some of the most sensational criminal trials of the Gilded Age. In People v. Harris, Judge Smyth sentenced wealthy young medical student, Carlyle Harris, to the electric chair for killing his secret teenage bride with a morphine overdose. He also presided over the trial of Ella Nelson who fatally shot her married lover four times and was improbably acquitted of murder thanks to the courtroom tactics of notorious defense attorney William F. Howe.
Judge Smyth was well respected on the bench but known to be a prosecution-friendly judge “who could make lawyers quake like schoolboys.”[4] Francis Wellman, a highly experienced trial lawyer and prosecutor who appeared before him many times, recalled his competence and professionalism: “[Smyth] always presented a singularly calm and equable appearance on the Bench; I never saw him yield to irritability or exhibit the slightest impatience. Sound law and substantial justice were characteristic of his every ruling.”[5]
In 1894, Smyth was defeated for re-election as Recorder when a State Senate Committee’s investigation and findings of police corruption contributed to the wholesale defeat of Tammany Hall’s candidates and the election of a reform Mayor, William L. Strong.[6] Smyth rebounded quickly and was elected the following November to the New York State Supreme Court for the First Judicial District. In between his terms on the bench, Smyth was elected Grand Sachem, or leader, of the Tammany Society in May 1895, reflecting an ethical culture very different from today’s standards barring judges from holding leadership positions in political organizations.
In his first speech as Grand Sachem, Smyth declared: “‘I am a politician and I believe every man in this country should be who is worthy of being a citizen. It does not necessarily follow that to be a politician is to be a scoundrel.”[7] Judge Smyth does not appear to have come under any suspicion of political favoritism or corruption while serving on the bench. On the other hand, one wonders what Republican litigants and attorneys appearing before the once and future jurist may have thought about his closing remarks as Grand Sachem urging all Democrats “to join with Tammany Hall and make united warfare against the Republican enemy.”[8]
Smyth died from pneumonia while vacationing in Atlantic City in August 1900.
[1] “Justice Smyth is Dead,” New York Times, Aug. 19, 1900.
[2] Id.
[3] The Recorder was one of the four judges of the Court of General Sessions, the New York City court of general jurisdiction in criminal cases. A coveted “political bone,” the position of Recorder, though primarily judicial, also encompassed service on varying municipal and charitable boards, including, after 1857, serving as a Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Board. See “The Recordership,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 1866.
[4] Cait Murphy, Scoundrels in Law, Smithsonian Books, 2010, at 106-07.
[5] Kathleen Kanaley, “Biographies: Judge Henry Gildersleeve and Recorder Frederick Smyth,” The New York City Criminal, available at nyccriminal.ace.fordham.edu; quoting Francis Wellman, Gentlemen of the Jury. Reminiscences of Thirty Years at the Bar, Macmillan Co., 1924, at 226.
[6] “Strong!: Tammany Overwhelmed by a Plurality of About 50,000,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1894.
[7] “Grand Sachem of Tammany,” New York Times, May 21, 1895.
[8] Id.