Furman appears in a colorful account (written forty years later) of the 1896 murder trial of "Little Bud" Watkins, the first trial held in United States District Court for the Southern District of Indian Territory, then sitting at Ardmore, after Congress extended homicide jurisdiction to the federal courts in Indian Territory. Furman, "the foremost criminal lawyer of Texas," sat with co-counsel at a defense table "piled high with law books." Inside the railing sat the defendant, just beyond his teens, part Chickasaw, part white. At the Government's table sat United States Attorney A.C. Cruce, brother of the future governor Lee Cruce, and his assistant.Clarence B. Douglas, "The First Murder Trial," Daily Oklahoman, Sunday, December 20, 1936. http://files.usgwarchives.net/ok/grady/history/trial.txt.
