Chapter XXXI
ALTHOUGH indictments had been returned against F. A. Hyde, John A. Benson, Joost H. Schneider and Henry P. Dimond on February 17, 1904, the defendants were not brought to trial until April 1. 1908. Legal efforts to prevent the case from being reached at all were responsible for some of the delays, but generally the continuances and repeated postponements were brought about through technical questions raised to hinder proceedings. At all events, it has taken the Government more than four years to bring the quartet of alleged conspirators into Court, and there is a strong likelihood of the case dragging its weary length along for some time to come before any final determination is reached, the trial being still in progress at this writing.
Three of the defendants—Hyde, Benson and Dimond—reside in San Francisco, California, while Schneider is engaged in business at Tuscon, Arizona. They were accused under Section 5440, of the United States Revised Statutes, with having defrauded the Government of its public lands, their plan of operation, according to the theory of the prosecution, embracing a system without parallel for its magnitude. In brief, it contemplated the fraudulent acquisition of title to thousands of acres of school lands within the confines of forest reserves in California and Oregon by process of "dummy" and fictitious applicants, and the exchange of tracts thus acquired for valuable timber lands of the United States under the forest reserve lieu land Act of June 4, 1897. It was through this exchange with the Government that they became involved in trouble, as the United States has no authority over State lands of any kind, and had the alleged conspirators confined their operations to the acquisition of title to the 16th and 36th sections of townships in the two States named, the chances are that nothing in the nature of a criminal proceeding would have resulted from their scheme of looting. As soon, however, as they undertook to select Government land in lieu of their fraudulent State holdings, it brought them within the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam, and entailed a condition that has resulted in a long legal battle for their liberties.
Dimond was stationed at Washington, D. C, during the period it was claimed the frauds had been committed, and his supposed connection with Hyde and Benson as their legal representative at the National Capital is responsible for the case being tried there. It was set up in the indictment that the fact of his appearing before the Land Departments at different times in the interest of the two alleged arch conspirators formed the connecting link, and entitled the Government to try the defendants wherever any part of the plot was hatched. The attempt to remove the quartet to Washington for trial was resisted to the utmost, but without avail, as the United States Supreme Court sustained the Government's contention that if any part of the proceedings tending to connect the defendants with the commission of a conspiracy originated in Washington, they could be brought across the continent for trial.
The first official intimation that frauds of an extensive character were being perpetrated by the Hyde-Benson ring, came in the form of a letter from J. A. Zabriskie, an attorney of Tuscon, Arizona (since deceased), who advised the General Land Office at Washington, D. C, that he was in possession of information Page 483
