The oilmen’s trials

The results were uneven. Fall and Doheny were acquitted of conspiracy to defraud the United States in December 1926. Sinclair was acquitted of conspiracy in April 1928. Fall was later convicted of receiving Doheny’s bribe; in March 1930 another jury acquitted Doheny of giving it. The Federal Judicial Center describes the public bewilderment at those outcomes.[1]

That is not a typo to be repaired by silently changing the acquittal into a conviction. Criminal cases must establish the charged defendant’s offense to the criminal standard, on the evidence admitted in that proceeding. Different charges, evidentiary rulings and fact-finders can produce outcomes that look difficult to reconcile. An acquittal is an important legal outcome; it does not require a finding that every disputed transaction was proper.

The civil cases answer another part of the story. In Mammoth Oil, the Supreme Court upheld cancellation on grounds including fraudulent collusion. It expressly said it did not need to decide whether Fall had been bribed. This means the government could recover the reserve without first winning a criminal bribery case against the oilman. Treating a civil recovery, a conspiracy acquittal and a bribery conviction as interchangeable loses the actual history.[2]

Sinclair’s criminal acquittal did not mean he escaped all punishment. One case concerned his refusal to answer questions in the Senate inquiry. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction in April 1929, concluding that the inquiry concerned public property and potential legislation rather than merely his private affairs. A pending lawsuit did not automatically extinguish Congress’s interest in the leases.[1]

A second case concerned detectives systematically following jurors during the 1927 conspiracy trial. The Supreme Court upheld Sinclair’s criminal-contempt conviction in June 1929. It held that the surveillance could obstruct justice even without proof that an operative actually approached a juror or that a juror knew of the shadowing. Sinclair’s side asserted that it was monitoring for interference; the Court did not accept that as a defense to the conduct established.[2]

The decision also reversed William J. Burns’s conviction for insufficient evidence while affirming the others before it. That qualification is useful: even in an opinion sustaining serious misconduct findings, the result was not identical for every defendant. “Sinclair went to prison for the oil scandal” is understandable shorthand. “Sinclair was convicted of paying Fall a bribe” substitutes a different offense for the convictions actually upheld.[2]