During the summer of 1912, President William Howard Taft appointed Frederick E. Fuller of Nome federal judge for Interior Alaska, headquarters Fairbanks. Fuller, a 44-year-old former Pennsylvanian, immediately faced a difficult trial: A murder case scheduled for September in Iditarod.

The charge was sensational. Joseph Campbell, a 34 year-old woodcutter and laborer, had been arrested for murdering the Nelson brothers, miners John and Gus, on an island in the Kuskokwim River, near the mouth of the Tuluksak River. In June 1911, the two men, both about 40, had been shot, robbed and buried in a shallow grave.

There were no eye witnesses. But Natives fishing nearby heard shots and screams. They also saw a man they identified as Campbell on the island.

The brothers' bodies were located by their younger brother, Nels, in March 1912 after rumors about the shooting rippled through the Native community to his home on Norton Sound. Nels showed the bodies to a deputy marshal, and the deputy telegraphed Commissioner Edward Stier of Georgetown, 190 miles up the Kuskokwim.

Stier assembled a coroner's jury to conduct an inquest at the grave site. It took a week to reach the site by dog team.

Stier later wrote that he had to bring his six-man jury with him because "I could not get a jury of six white men on the Kuskokwim River below Georgetown." He also had to bring an interpreter for the Native witnesses, a man known as Waska The First, one of many Waskas in the region.

Joseph Campbell was convicted at trial. The evidence, including the testimony of Natives, was largely circumstantial. During jury selection, several potential jurors said they never would convict a white man on the basis of Native testimony. They were dismissed but their words hung in the air.

The jury deliberated 48 hours after hearing final arguments. Three times the foreman said the jurors could not reach a verdict. Three times Judge Fuller replied keep trying. The fourth time the foreman asked to see the judge. He had a verdict in hand.

Campbell appealed to the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, citing numerous errors by the judge. His jury instructions for one.

In an era when many Alaska lawyers had modest formal education -- a number had read law rather than attended law school -- Frederic Fuller's background stands out. He studied at Wesleyan University in Connecticut where Woodrow Wilson was one of his professors and entered the bar in Washington, D.C., after earning a law degree at the National University. He practiced in Washington before coming to Alaska.

Judge Fuller was plain-spoken in addressing the matter of race in his instructions to the jury, all white males.

"In this case Indian witnesses have testified, and you are instructed that the evidence of Indian witnesses is entitled to as much credit as the evidence of white men; and such credibility and weight are determined by the same rules of law, and no witness is to be discredited simply on account of his race or color, as every witness, whether white, dark, black or yellow, unless otherwise disqualified by statute, is competent to testify. And in law all races stand upon the same plane."

Remarkable words for 1912 America where the South was segregated and racism common in the rest of the nation, including Alaska.

The three judges who heard the appeal upheld Campbell's conviction, noting the jurors must have recognized "the Indian witnesses were as competent to testify as those of any other nationality." Joseph Campbell received a life sentence.

Michael Carey is a former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com

ADVERTISEMENT