Morrie R. Preston

Released
Full name:Morris Rockwood Preston
Date of birth:28. 11. 1882
Date of death:10. 10. 1924
Age:41† Deceased
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1900s
State:Nevada
Time Imprisoned:
7 Years 2 Months 0 Days
Support
Anarchism Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Morrie R. Preston

Biography

Morrie R. Preston was a young IWW-aligned restaurant cook in Goldfield, Nevada who, during the bitter 1907 Goldfield Consolidated Mines strike, shot and killed restaurant owner John Silva in what he maintained was self-defense. Mine operators and the Nevada Mine Owners' Association seized on the killing to frame Preston as a Western Federation of Miners assassin, securing a 25-year murder conviction widely viewed by labor historians as a frame-up. Preston was paroled in 1914 after a sustained labor defense campaign and posthumously pardoned by the Nevada Board of Pardons in 1987. He was paroled in 1914 and died in a Los Angeles workplace accident on October 10, 1924.

Case

Nevada State Prison
Charges: Murder (shooting of restaurant owner John Silva
Arrested: Mar 10, 1907
Sentenced: May 9, 1907
Incarcerated: May 9, 1907
Released: Jul 9, 1914
Sentence: Twenty-five years. Paroled from Nevada State Prison; on July 9, 1914 the Nevada Attorney General ruled that he had been paroled and that the warden had a duty to release him. Verdict as recorded: Yes — convicted of second-degree murder on May 9, 1907 (widely regarded as a frame-up). Charges as recorded: Murder (shooting of restaurant owner John Silva during the Goldfield miners' strike)
Convicted: Yes
Institution State: Nevada

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