Biography
Idell Kennedy was convicted in the federal wartime speech prosecutions in Washington State and sentenced on June 29, 1918 to eleven years in federal prison and a $5,000 fine — one of the heaviest terms handed down to a woman under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. She remained at liberty while her case was appealed. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions on February 2, 1920 and denied a rehearing on April 5, 1920, after which she entered custody. President Warren G. Harding commuted her sentence effective December 25, 1921, the same Christmas Day clemency that released Eugene Debs and other wartime speech prisoners; she had served approximately nineteen to twenty months of the eleven years. Her prison-admission register has not been located, so the exact date she entered custody, and the institution that held her, remain undocumented. She was tried alongside Frank J. Howenstine, who entered McNeil Island Penitentiary on May 21, 1920 following the same appeal.
