Everett Steerman

Everett Steerman was chairman of the Legal Aid Committee of the Kansas State Bar Association. His brief but consequential role in the account begins when he receives Richard Eugene Hickock’s written protests against the trial that convicted Hickock and Perry Smith. Steerman’s concern brought the defendants’ allegations before the state’s legal profession and helped set in motion an extraordinary review of the convictions.

Position and Point of Contact

Hickock continued writing letters to contest his conviction, and one eventually reached Steerman. The correspondence made Steerman a point of contact between a condemned prisoner’s claims and the Bar Association’s institutional process. His significance lies not in a personal connection to the case’s events, but in his response to allegations about how the trial had been conducted.

The Complaints About the Trial

Hickock argued that the hostile atmosphere in Garden City had prevented the selection of an impartial jury and that the court should have moved the trial elsewhere. He also alleged that at least two prospective jurors had indicated a presumption of guilt during questioning. The account notes a procedural complication: the questioning had not been recorded, because Kansas law did not require a record unless a specific demand was made.

Hickock further objected that many jurors knew the deceased and that Judge Tate had been an intimate friend of Mr. Clutter. His most serious accusations targeted the defense attorneys, Arthur Fleming and Harrison Smith: he claimed that they had failed to prepare or present a real defense and suggested that their conduct reflected collusion with the prosecution. These were Hickock’s assertions, not findings established by the account; they nonetheless raised questions about whether the defendants had received an adequate defense.

The Inquiry and Its Consequences

Disturbed by the allegations, Steerman prompted the Kansas State Bar Association to take a course of action described as unprecedented in Kansas legal history. The Association appointed Wichita attorney Russell Shultz to investigate and, if the evidence warranted it, challenge the convictions through habeas corpus proceedings in the Kansas Supreme Court, which had recently upheld the verdicts. Steerman’s intervention thus helped move the complaints beyond the defendants’ letters and into a formal institutional process.

Shultz’s investigation consisted of little more than interviews with Smith and Hickock, after which he publicly framed the issue as one of the defendants’ right to a complete defense and the importance of due process. He filed the habeas corpus petition, and the Kansas Supreme Court appointed retired justice Walter G. Thiele to conduct a full-scale hearing. Almost two years after the trial, the principal figures reconvened in a Garden City courtroom, though Smith and Hickock themselves were absent. The hearing placed the trial’s conduct under renewed scrutiny; the evidence identifies Steerman as the person whose concern helped prompt that review, not as the investigator or decision-maker who resolved the claims.