Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Not often is a man relieved and “well-pleased” upon being convicted of murder.

Yet that was the case with William “Bill” Byrd, when a Spokane jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in a Dishman shooting earlier in 1911.

If they had convicted him of first-degree murder, he would have been hanged.

Byrd walked over and shook hands with the jurymen (yes, they were all men in those days). Some shook his hand with “a look of disgust on their faces.”

Byrd thanked them for “treating me fairly.”

The prosecutor certainly didn’t think the verdict was fair. He told reporters he had presented “the most convincing first-degree case I had ever seen.” Byrd packed a gun, went to the construction site where his two antagonists worked and shot them. Then he shot a pursuer, the Dishman justice of the peace.

One juryman told reporters that what saved Byrd’s life was the fact that he loaded the gun after he got to the construction site, indicating he hadn’t planned “to shoot on sight.”

Byrd was facing a sentence of 10 years to life. The prosecutor said that if the sentence was too light, he might file charges related to one of the other murders.