John Hicklin Hall was a politician and an attorney in the state of Oregon. Hall was a native of the Portland area, he served in the Oregon House of Representatives in the early 1890s before he was appointment as the United States District Attorney for Oregon. While working as a federal prosecutor, he became involved in the Oregon land fraud scandal. This was political scandal including several high-profile public officials that conspired to defraud the government in acquiring land for private use. As district attorney, Hall’s job was to represent the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. Hall was convicted for failing to do his job and punish some of the participants, but was eventually excused. Hall was also the father of John H. Hall, who went on to serve as the Republican representative of Oregon.
Hall was born July 17, 1854 in Multnomah County, Oregon, east of the city of Portland. He died July 27, 1937. Both of his parents died when he was only ten years old, leaving…show more content… These men used their position to bribe others and took from the public use. The land was intended to help settlers; but the men took this as an open door policy for them to obtain the land under falsified documentation. The investigation led to documentation that had fake names of people who never existed, and they only obtained the land because of bribing men to create documentation that would show it was normal American settlers. The use of political power to bribe officials in an office is not only a means to self-accomplishment but it takes the initial integrity of the law away. The law they, as government officials, probably had some type of say in regarding their state shouldn’t have implemented. I would think that Oregon had a huge say in what the land was used for because the railroad went
