William Paul Brady (February 12, 1876February 27, 1943) was an American lawyer. From 1909 to around 1914, he served as the first district attorney for Texas' 70th judicial district, and from 1917 to 1919 he was the judge for the newly created El Paso County Court at Law. Brady prosecuted several high-profile murder cases as a district attorney, including of Agnes Orner, and in a death-penalty case that has since been termed a "legal lynching" of a Mexican boy charged with killing a white woman.
Brady was born to a pioneering Austin family and grew up there. An older brother, John W. Brady, also became a Texas lawyer and judge; a niece, Caroline Brady, would go on to become a philologist. Will Brady spent three years after graduation as a county school teacher, then ran for county superintendent. He won and ultimately served two terms, from 1900 to 1904. Brady thereafter obtained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Texas and moved to Pecos, where after several years in private practice he was appointed district attorney by Texas Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell. Brady moved to El Paso in 1915 and resumed private practice, but was soon named judge, this time by Governor James E. Ferguson. Brady resigned in 1919 and moved to California to pursue interests in oil; he spent the remainder of his career as an oil attorney, and then with the National Farm Loan Association.
In Austin, Pecos, El Paso, and San Luis Obispo, Brady remained deeply involved in the social, political, and business milieu. The El Paso Herald described him as "one of the best known public men in west Texas". A Democrat, Brady spoke at and organized numerous gatherings and attended county and statewide conventions. A Catholic, he was involved in innumerable social functions, and at one point served as the state president of the Catholic Knights of America in Texas. Likewise, "for many years among the front ranks of our business men", as the Pecos Times put it, Brady incorporated both the Cruces Oil Corporation and the Pecos Valley Southern Railway.
Early life and education William Paul Brady was born on February 12, 1876, in Austin, Texas. His parents, James and Agnes Brady, were early settlers of the city, having arrived five years earlier. Will Brady was one of five children; his siblings were John W., David John, Agnes Margaret, and Helen Gertrude Brady. His brother John would also become a lawyer and judge, with a successful career upended by a three-year prison sentence for murder. Meanwhile, his niece Caroline Brady would go on to become a philologist.
Brady was raised in Austin and attended the public schools there. He graduated from Austin High School in 1895, although he had matriculated at the University of Texas a year earlier. He graduated from the university's College of Arts in 1896.
Career Education Brady began teaching in Sprinkle, Texas, around 1897, where he led the country school. Term typically began around September or October, after the cotton crop had been gathered, and ended around June. While a teacher, Brady was involved with the Travis County Teachers' Association. At gatherings of the Association, he co-led discussions of a new text book law and of a paper entitled "School Law", and spoke on "Needed Changes in the School Law", "Truth v. Fiction in the School Reader", "How to Teach Texas History", and "Professional Courtesy". He also helped organize a circulating library intended to supply the teachers in the county with professional books, and in 1900 taught physical geography at the Elgin summer normal.
In 1900, his third year at Sprinkle, Brady ran for the position of Travis County school superintendent, responsible for the rural, rather than city, schools in the county. An endorsement signed by three Sprinkle residentsW. B. Barr, T. J. Rowzee, and F. T. Maxwelldeclared that Brady "is a young man, well educated, full of ambition, and will strive hard to build up a reputation for himself", and by the end of March Brady was making what the Austin Daily Statesman termed "an energetic canvass" for the position. Brady's opponent in the April primary was James H. Day, a school principal in Austin. The election was close, but Brady won with 2,679 votes to 2,524. Brady won the November election uncontested, and was sworn in to begin his two-year term on December 1. Days before the election, Brady submitted an affidavit, read at a political gathering, accusing a district judge, Frank G. Morris, of summoning a grand jury to investigate a political opponent. The following year Brady took a three-week vacation that included stops in Buffalo and New York City.
As superintendent, Brady's duties included reviewing transfers and expulsions of students, as well as the hiring of instructors. This included teaching at summer normals in 1901, 1903, and 1904, grading papers from examinations for teachers' certificates, and even selecting instructors for the newly formed Girls' Industrial College in Denton. Brady remained involved in the teachers' Association, at times organizing its meetings, and giving talks on current events. He attended meetings of the Texas State Teachers Association as well, including one at which he co-led discussion of a paper titled "Should Schools with One Teacher be Limited as to Number of Grades?"
Brady ran for a second term in 1902. Penning a letter in the Statesman in support of his candidacy, he wrote that "[t]he city people pay very little attention to the county superintendent because he has nothing at all to do with the city schools, but in their choice they should be guided to a considerable extent by those directly connected with the county schools. There are eighty teachers and 225 trustees in this county, and as to my record in office I refer you to these people, who are almost unanimous in supporting me for re-election." Facing Day again in the June primary, Brady won by fewer than 100 votes; the Statesman described the race as "neck and neck", and initially recorded Day as leading. Brady won the November election uncontested. He ultimately served two terms as superintendent. His successor, Carl Hartman, was sworn in on December 1, 1904. The following day, Brady helped conduct a teachers' examination, arranged by Hartman, for positions in the public school. Brady also attended a meeting of the Teachers' Association on December 17, where he was presented with an umbrella in appreciation of his tenure.
Law In the summer of 1904, Brady spent several weeks in Milwaukee with a G. W. Briggs, visiting the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis around the same time. At the end of the year, while still officially superintendent, he matriculated at the University of Texas to study law. While at the university Brady was involved in committees related to the final ball, the auditing of expenses for the school yearbook, and celebrations for Texas Independence Day. Brady applied for admission to the bar in 1905 and graduated in 1906 with a Bachelor of Laws. In the month after graduation, Brady traveled to Texarkana, Texas, where he was the best man at the wedding of Roy Lee Walker, the quartermaster for the Confederate Home in Austin.
After graduation Brady moved to Pecos, where he worked with James McKenzie, a member of the Texas House of Representatives. The firm, branded McKenzie & Brady, served both legal and real estate needs. It included an abstract office which claimed to have complete abstracts of all of Reeves, Loving, and Winkler counties.
District attorney On February 3, 1909 Texas Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell appointed Brady the district attorney of the newly created seventieth judicial district, covering Midland, Ector, Gaines, Glasscock, Reeves, Ward, Andrews, Crane, Loving, Winkler, and Upton counties. S. J. Isaacks, a Midland attorney, was named the district's judge.
In 1911 Brady prosecuted León Martínez Jr., in a case that has since been termed a "legal lynching". On July 23, a 26-year-old woman, Emma Brown, was shot and stabbed while riding in a buggy. Martínez was arrested shortly thereafter, largely on the evidence that he had been seen speaking to Brown at the general store the day of the murder. Martínez, who was 15, confessed twice: once, when a posse promised not to hang him until the sheriff arrived if he confessed, and again, when the sheriff threatened to hand Martínez back to the posse if he did not confess. In the early morning of July 25, 1911, two days after the murder, Brady held up Martínez's written confession to the crowd gathered outside the jail.
On July 29, five days after Martínez's arrest, with Brady prosecuting, a guilty verdict and a death sentence were in hand. After the verdict, according to The Galveston Daily News, "hundreds" of people came up to Brady and Judge Isaacks to shake their hands "for their prompt attention to the case and their narrow avertence of a lynching". Isaacks scheduled the hanging for September 1. A petition, said to be signed by "nearly every person in Reeves County", was sent to Governor Oscar Branch Colquitt asking him to not grant clemency, and Brady himself met with Colquitt in August for the same purpose. National and international concern, as well as appeals, including an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, nonetheless pushed the case into 1914, when Martínez was hanged. During these proceedings, Brady was said by the El Paso Herald to be "active in pushing the case... towards a carrying out of the judgment of the district court, calling for hanging, as strongly as he knows how."
In 1912 Brady tried another high-profile murder case, this time of Agnes Orner, who was charged with poisoning her eleven-year-old daughter in El Paso. Orner had already been tried twice; her first trial resulted in a conviction and life sentence that was subsequently reversed, and her second ended in a mistrial. Despite Brady's efforts, Orner's third trial also resulted in a mistrial, with eight jurors favoring acquittal and four conviction. Orner was finally convicted on the sixth try, then pardoned after serving five years in prison.
In January 1913 the position of county judge for Reeves became vacant with the death of John Y. Leavell. Brady was one of four applicants for the position, which was filled by vote of three county commissioners, but lost to Hector McKellar, until then the district and county clerk. In May Brady prosecuted W. J. Hiles for the murder of Tom Tucker, a Reeves county commissioner who, Hiles claimed, had attempted to assault Hiles's wife. Hiles was convicted of manslaughter, and given the lowest possible sentence of two years. Immediately after the conviction Brady began prosecuting another murder case, this time of James L. Wright, who was charged with shooting his Pecos neighbor C. C. Steed. The case was tried in Midland County due to a change in venue; Judge Isaacks went as far as to coordinate a special train run by the Pecos Valley Southern Railway to gather further potential jurors, but after examining 176, was able to seat only eight. Wright was convicted in September, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The case was "particularly remarkable", the Herald wrote, as the first murder case tried in Midland County in which a white man was convicted.
Brady remained the district attorney into at least February 1914, when he extracted a confession from Fernando Subia to shooting and killing city marshal T. Y. Moorehead. Brady testified at the trial, held that month, which resulted in a conviction and death sentence; Subia's sentence was later commuted to life. Newspapers compared the case of Subia, another Mexican accused of killing a white person, to that of León Martinez, and before Subia's commutation, the two were held in adjoining cells and scheduled to be hanged the same month; on his way to the gallows, Martinez gave his loose change to Subia.
County judge