SALT LAKE CITY — During the past week, the Frank E. Moss Courthouse took on a carnival-like atmosphere.
Movie and singing stars stood outside the courthouse in protest. Banners were waved. Protest songs were sung. A school bus driver even took a detour from a field trip to take a bus-load of fifth-graders past the rally, ultimately costing him his job.
The Tim DeChristopher trial was the latest in a long storied history of infamous cases in Utah's legal history that all happened at Utah's federal courthouse.
For more than eight decades, the courthouse at the corner of 400 South and Main Street has been the stage for some of the state's, and the nation's, highest profile cases, including Brian David Mitchell, accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart; Gary Gilmore whose conviction and subsequent execution marked the return of the death penalty in the United States; the Olympic bribery scandal; and the Singer-Swapp standoff.
The Frank E. Moss Courthouse also stands as one of Salt Lake City's architectural treasures with its elaborate classical revival style. Inside, several of the old courtrooms are so ornate they have the appearance of a movie set.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
"I have one of the three historical courtrooms. It's the smallest in the building. It's also the most beautiful. I'm happy every time I look at it," said Tena Campbell, chief judge for the U.S. District Court of Utah.
But as beloved as the courthouse is to judges and all involved in the federal justice system, it is no longer practical to use. In fact, Utah outgrew its federal courthouse nearly 20 years ago.
"It doesn't fit our needs," Campbell said.
On Feb. 24, ground was broken just to the west of the current building for a new federal courthouse. The new building will rise 10 stories and have 368,000 square feet. But project managers note that the building will appear to be taller because some of the floors will have 20-foot high ceilings.
Construction on the original courthouse was completed in 1905. The land the courthouse was built on was reportedly purchased for one silver dollar. The building originally was also the site of the U.S. Post Office.
Renovations were made on the granite and sandstone structure with Doric grooved columns in 1912 and 1932, bringing the courthouse to its current rendition. But it has remained essentially the same now for nearly 80 years. It was renamed the Frank E. Moss Courthouse in 1990 after the former Utah senator.
For 80 years, Utah's federal courthouse has been the scene for some of Utah's most infamous cases and incidents.
On Oct. 10, 1927, Eliza Simmons fired six shots inside Judge Tillman Davis Johnson's courtroom, striking Johnson three times in the knee, thigh and hip, according to Time magazine. Simmons, whose husband was killed while working for Utah Copper Co., filed a civil suit against the company but received far less money than she was hoping to get. Johnson survived.
A bullet hole from the incident can still be seen to this day in Judge Dale Kimball's courtroom in the wall behind his bench.
In 1981, Joseph Paul Franklin was convicted in federal court of violating the civil rights of two black joggers he murdered in Liberty Park. He was later convicted in state court on two counts of murder. Franklin was also convicted of killing other black people in other states. He was convicted of killing a total of seven people. Franklin has received life sentences in Utah and Wisconsin and is on death row in Missouri.
Four Navajos were tried for the killings of two tribal police officers in 1987 in San Juan County. Two of the men were convicted and two acquitted.
John Timothy Singer was convicted of both state and federal charges for his role in the infamous Singer-Swapp standoff in Marion in 1988. Singer shot and killed Utah Department of Corrections Lt. Fred House, a K9 handler trying to help end the siege.
In 1999, Michael Brad Magleby was convicted of burning a cross in the Salt Lake City yard of an interracial couple three years earlier. Magleby claimed what he did was constitutionally protected as "symbolic speech that uses fire." The courts disagreed and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In 2003, a year after Salt Lake City hosted its first ever Winter Olympic Games, the bribery scandal involving former Utah Olympic leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson was thrown out of court by U.S. District Judge David Sam. Welch and Johnson were accused of trying to bribe International Olympic Committee officials with lavish gifts in an effort to gain the 2002 bid. Both men were acquitted while at the same time, Sam criticized prosecutors for filing the case.
In 2010, Elizabeth Smart — kidnapped and sexually abused for nine months — delivered some of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching testimony the courthouse had ever heard, discussing in graphic detail the abuses she suffered at the hands of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee.
Smart will again add to the storied history of events in the building when she returns to the Frank E. Moss Courthouse in May for Mitchell's sentencing. Smart is expected to address the court, and possibly Mitchell directly, at sentencing.
But when talking about the old federal courthouse and when asking those who worked for many years in or around it for memories, one name is continually brought up — Judge Willis W. Ritter.
Ritter was the Utah federal court's first chief justice, a position he held from 1954 until his death in 1978. But it was Ritter's eccentric, and often times bizarre behavior that made him infamous. Ritter's antics, both inside and out of the courtroom, became the subject of lore. A book about Ritter, Thunder Over Zion: The Life of Chief Judge Willis W. Ritter by Parker Nielson and Patricia Cowley, was published a few years ago.
Ritter, fed up with the noise coming from the post office that was below his courtroom, once had a postal worker arrested for using the courthouse elevator. But the noise continued, and by day's end, 24 postal workers were arrested.
On another occasion, Ritter did not want to be photographed by the media as he walked to work from the nearby Newhouse Hotel. A KSL-TV cameraman standing on the sidewalk shot video of Ritter as he walked into work. When Ritter reached his office, he ordered the U.S. Marshals Office to seize the camera, claiming the entire block around the courthouse was the court's environment. The camera was held in a back room in the courthouse for a month.
Former KSL reporter Duane Cardall learned about Ritter's iron fist style just as he was getting into the business.
In 1969, Cardall was an intern for Channel 4 and was asked to cover a Ritter hearing. Because of pregnancy issues with his wife, Cardall took a first generation pager with him so he could be contacted in case of an emergency.
"I started covering the hearing into the morning session, and this shrill beep goes off in the courtroom. I sheepishly tried to hide myself. Judge Ritter goes, 'What was that?!'" Cardall recalled.
The reporter stood up and explained to the judge it was his pager device and apologized. That's when Ritter ordered Cardall be taken into custody.
Cardall was placed in an area with the marshals for the rest of the hearing. Near the end of the hearing, Ritter instructed Cardall to approach the bench.
"He said, 'Young man, come up here. You'd better get an attorney,'" Cardall recalled. "He was going to throw the book at me."
Cardall quickly placed a call to his newsroom and an attorney was immediately dispatched to the courthouse to try to explain to the judge what was happening. Cardall was eventually allowed to go home that day, but not without a parting shot from Ritter.
"He said, "I was ready to throw the book at you. Don't you ever do anything like that in my courtroom again,'" Cardall said. "It was a great learning experience to say the least."
Using the U.S. Marshal Service as his own private police force wasn't uncommon for Ritter. One story told by judges involves a case in which the jury pool was too small, so Ritter told the marshals to stand outside the courthouse and arrest enough passersby until a jury pool could be filled.
In 2008, U.S. Senior District Judge for Utah Bruce Jenkins delivered a talk on the lessons learned from Ritter before the Federal Bar Association. He talked about a night of drinking at the nearby Manhattan Club that turned into an argument and eventually a challenge of a duel between Ritter and a city commissioner. Ritter chose the "weapons" for the duel, and he chose bellies, quickly flattening his thinner opponent with his stomach.
He recalled one time Ritter sent a clerk to the liquor store at the hotel across the street to buy three bottles of Wild Turkey with a check. The store employee told the clerk that checks weren't accepted.
"The judicial clerk said, 'You will take this one,'" Jenkins recalled.
And the store did.
It was Ritter who signed an order stopping the execution of Gary Gilmore, prompting the state to fly immediately that night to Denver to appear before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.
Near the end of Ritter's life, controversy seemed to follow him around every corner. In 1977, the solicitor general of the United States and Utah's attorney general filed a petition to have Ritter removed from every case in which the United States was a party.
Ritter was a champion for the underdog, Jenkins noted, with a special affection for Native Americans. But controversy at the end of his career seemed to overshadow everything else he had done. Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" tried to get Ritter to talk to him for a story they were doing on him, but Ritter denied all of his interview requests.
"He could be charming, solicitous, attentive, compassionate, interested and a gracious host — indeed the epitome of a sophisticated gentleman," Jenkins said in his speech.
But as one former clerk called him, Ritter was also a Shakespearean tragedy. There are stories today claiming that Ritter's ghost still walks the halls of the Frank E. Moss Courthouse.
The old courthouse will receive seismic upgrades but otherwise remain the same as the judges and clerks move into the nicer, new building on the same block in the coming years.
The new building will have 14 courtrooms. It will have chambers for district and magistrate judges, two grand jury suites, the U.S. Probation Office, the U.S. Marshal Service, pretrial suites for the U.S. attorney and federal public defender, the 10th Circuit Branch Law Library and the U.S. Federal Court Clerk's Office. It is scheduled to open in 2014.
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