Minnie M. Raker

Gretna, Neb., July 27 - Mrs. W.S. Raker died at Gretna early last Monday morning. She left four children, aged respectively 1, 3, 5 and 7 years. Short services were held at the home last Wednesday and were attended by the entire village population.

The remains were sent to Elmwood, her old home, twenty-five miles distant from Gretna, where the funeral was held Wednesday afternoon. Services were held at the Methodist church, Rev. Gilmore officiating. The funeral was attended by at least 400 persons, nearly all of the town people and many from the surrounding towns being present.

From the Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Douglas Co., Nebraska), dated July 28, 1895


A Judicial Brute

This is the story of a pathetic ending of a piece of judicial brutality without a parallel in the annals of the bench in any country.

On the 1st day of March last a paragraph appeared in an obscure weekly newspaper published at Gretna, in Sarpy county, making allusion to a visit which the foreman of the grand jury that had been in session in Omaha had made to a resort located in the proscribed district in pursuance of an investigation of the social evil then under way. This paragraph, although true, gave umbrage to the grand jury foreman. Complaint was entered against W.S. Raker, editor of the Gretna Reporter, charging him with criminal libel.

Instead of bringing this complaint before a magistrate of the county in which the paper was published, and in which the poor helpless defendant resided, Mr. Raker was dragged from his home to answer before an Omaha justice of the peace to an accusation of felony. He was given a farcical preliminary hearing and bound over to appear for trial before the Nebraska Jeffreys, Cunningham R. Scott. Every protest against this unwarranted proceeding was overruled with coarse jibes and jeers. All the safeguards which the bill of rights and constitution throw around the individual citizen accused of crime were rudely brushed aside. Raker was mercilessly forced to submit to trial before a jury cowed by threats and drive to a verdict by the most monstrous charge which ever emanated from the bench – a charge that most grossly perverted the law and trampled under foot the sacred constitutional guaranties.

After being out nearly two days, revolting as the task was, the jury nerved itself up to a verdict of guilty, because it did not dare to incur the wrath of the monomaniac who had raved and frothed at the mouth for an hour in delivering his charge to it. When Raker filed a motion for a new trial, his bail was recalled and he was thrown unceremoniously into jail to await the pleasure of the judge who cruelly insisted he would take his own time in considering the application. Implored to permit Mr. Raker to continue under bond so he might return to his wife, who was prostrate on the sick bed and in a very precarious condition, the judicial brute turned a deaf ear to every appeal and ordered the sheriff to place Raker in the cage with vagabonds and hardened criminals. Only when the complainant in the case himself came to the judge, after Raker had been incarcerated more than a week, and warned Scott that Mrs. Raker was on the point of death, with a family of four children at her bedside, and that the people of Sarpy county were denouncing the outrage, did the judge finally relent and accept the bail bond he had repeatedly refused.

But it was too late! The angel of death was hovering over the home of Mr. Raker when he was allowed to return to witness the dying agony of the wife and mother and the bereavement of his children.

It is simply incredible that at the close of the nineteenth century and in the great republic that boasts the liberty of its citizens and the freedom of speech and press that such judicial tyranny should be tolerated even for one day. It is an indelible blot upon the record of the last legislature, and especially of the members of the delegation from Douglas county, that a monster of judicial iniquity should have escaped impeachment and summary removal from the bench for his reckless disregard of the rights of citizens, his usurpations of power and his highhanded liberation of confessed criminals in defiance of law and justice.