Prosecution and defense focused less on the circumstances of the assassination than the ideological warfare surrounding the sensational trail. Labor boss William Haywood stood accused of hiring an assassin to murder former Governor Frank Steunenberg. Haywood's union, said prosecutor William Borah, was a "criminal organization." And unionists seemed to believe "that there was no law in Idaho, and that they could take human life and yet be perfectly safe in doing so."
        

 The defense responded with an attack on the state's most damning witness. The assassin Harry Orchard, said attorney Clarence Darrow, had scapegoated innocent men. Orchard was "vile" and "loathsome." He was "a sneaking, craven coward." The claim that Orchard was born-again, having found religion, was "miserable claptrap." The assassin was "saving his soul by throwing the burden on Jesus."

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