Biography
William Hood was a painter from San Francisco convicted in the Sacramento IWW mass trial and sentenced to ten years. Contemporary reporting dates his arrest December 22, 1917. His exact admission to Leavenworth remains unresolved. Stephen M. Kohn reports the end of imprisonment December 22, 1923; the structured release date is recorded conservatively as December 1923 pending original register verification.
The March 1920 One Big Union Monthly prisoner roster, under the printed name HOOD , WILLIAM, reports: Federal . Indicted Sacramento , Feb. 8 , 1918 . Conspiracy to violate Sections 6 , 9 , 19 and 37 and Section 4 of Espionage Act . Convicted , 10- year sentence . Bail , $ 10,000 . Leavenworth Federal prison. This is the contemporary labor organization’s account. Indictment, bail and imposed sentence are distinguished from physical admission, actual release and complete time served; no missing custody endpoint is inferred. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/one-big-union-monthly/v02n03-mar-1920_One%20Big%20Union.pdf#page=12
1920s remaining-entry review: The Sunday Oregonian, February 17, 1918, page 4, in the Sacramento IWW arraignment report, explicitly states that Hood and George F. Voetter were arrested on December 22 last while carrying dynamite. The year is therefore 1917. The complete original page was visually checked. Arrest is established independently; the separate incarceration and release fields still require reconciliation with prison records and are not inferred from this report.
Contemporary individual date evidence
1920s remaining-entry review: The complete original 1921 Senate Amnesty and Pardon hearing, printed page 88 (PDF page 94), was visually checked. Its William Hood row labels June 21, 1918 as sentencing, with twelve months in jail and a $600 fine, rather than admission for the later ten-year Sacramento case. The conflated incarceration field is cleared; that separate sentence date is not assigned to this case. Kohn page 107 explicitly ends Hood imprisonment December 22, 1923, supporting correction of the inherited June 1923 release to December with month precision. This is attributed secondary evidence; no original discharge-register day is claimed. The December 22, 1923 Commercial and Financial Chronicle reports the December 15 commutation and forthcoming release warrants, not physical departure, and therefore is not used to infer a release day. Kohn December 1917 pretrial beginning is not copied as Leavenworth admission.
1920s remaining-entry review: The complete original Senate Document 159 (1922), printed page 10, was visually checked. Its William Hood entry specifically identifies the Northern California prosecution, conspiracy and violation of the Espionage Act, and the ten-year Leavenworth sentence imposed January 17, 1919. That date is added as sentencing for the Sacramento case, not incarceration. It is distinct from the separate twelve-month jail sentence dated June 21, 1918 in the 1921 hearing. Admission remains unresolved and is not filled from either sentencing date; the previously corrected December1923 release retains month precision.
The Sunday Oregonian, February 17, 1918, page 4: At the February 16, 1918 Sacramento arraignment, Hood pleaded guilty to one count of transporting dynamite and not guilty to other explosives counts. No plea was entered that day in the general conspiracy prosecution, and sentencing on the separate transport charge was deferred. These mixed pleas in separate indictments have not been treated as a guilty plea to the later Sacramento mass-trial case or as a new prison admission.
Shields’s article calls him Bill Hood and describes the small flower patch he tended in the Leavenworth prison yard, as remembered by released comrades discussing Sacramento prisoners left behind. The Bill/William identification is anchored in the same Sacramento group. This detail establishes prison life without supplying a new custody endpoint or imposed sentence.
The March1922 official report lists William Hood in List1 of convicted prisoners or parolees. The government entry reports Conspiracy and violating the espionage act, etc. a sentence of January 17, 1919, 10 years at Leavenworth.. Imposed terms, projected term-expiration dates, parole eligibility and intervals on bond are different measures; none is entered as a complete actual custody total. This attributed government entry is retained alongside the independently established individual chronology. [PDF10]
Government Prosecutions under the Espionage Act, Senate Document159 (March1922), PDF page 10.
