Biography
Nile Cochran was a farmer from Moville, Iowa, prosecuted after a shooting at a milk-strike picket line near the Iowa–South Dakota boundary on February 3, 1933. Wounded in the face and head, he received hospital treatment and was taken to the Sioux City jail. South Dakota authorities sought his extradition, and he was tried at Elk Point for the death of Robert D. Markell. Convicted of second-degree manslaughter, Cochran received a three-year sentence and was imprisoned at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. The International Labor Defense campaigned for him and supported his wife and seven children.
The Daily Worker of May 13, 1933, page 2, identifies him as Niles Cochran and reports that he was serving a three-year sentence in South Dakota for his activities in the milk strike. The report places his case among those taken up by the newly formed Farmers National Defense Bureau; it adds no exact admission or release day.
The December 2, 1933 Farmers’ Conference account says Cochran was serving a three-year sentence in the South Dakota State Penitentiary and that delegates sent solidarity and protest messages after hearing his case was before the state pardon board. This corroborates continuing imprisonment in the existing Markell picket-line prosecution. The article’s vague last-fall chronology is not substituted for the independently established February 3, 1933 event; three years is the imposed term, not completed service, and a pardon application is not an actual pardon or release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n289-dec-02-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
Labor Defender, May 1934: The roster prints Niles Cochran, gives second-degree manslaughter and a three-year sentence, and includes his wife’s letter describing the hardship of a husband and father in prison. The variant does not create a second person, and the nominal sentence is not a completed duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n05-may-1934-orig-LD.pdf#page=18
Page 5's Sasha Small prisoner-relief appeal prints Nile Cochran, serving a three-year South Dakota sentence from the 1933 milk strike. It describes his wounding and prosecution as an accomplice in Markell's killing, with the newspaper attributing the clash to armed strikebreakers. His wife reported operating their farm with seven children aged nine to nineteen and roughly fifteen dollars monthly income. This corroborates ongoing custody and family hardship; no exact endpoint or three years completed is established. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n302-Nat-dec-19-DW-LOC.pdf
The review records the three-year South Dakota sentence in the milk-strike shooting case, describing the prosecution theory and the defense’s pistol-versus-rifle evidence. It is a sentence report and does not establish three years actually served.
Page1’s February4 Sioux City dispatch reports that South Dakota Sheriff Tom Collins and State’s Attorney O.C.Donley sought extradition of Moville farmer and milk-strike picket Nile Cochran on assault-with-a-deadly-weapon accusations. After treatment for buckshot wounds to his face and head, he was taken to Sioux City jail as a fugitive from justice. Municipal-court bond was fixed at $3,000, which he failed to furnish. R.D.Markell was then alive but critically wounded; this early assault stage belongs to the same shooting prosecution that later became manslaughter, not a second unrelated arrest or a completed extradition.
Daily Worker, December 19, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.