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Extradition hearings were held before United States Commissioner Mark A. Foote in Chicago. The legendary attorney Clarence Darrow led a pro bono defense dream team that included Professor Charles C. Hyde, and Dean John H. Wigmore both of Northwestern University’s Law School.  Rudowitz admitted to taking part in the sanctioning and planning but not carrying out any of the crimes he was charged with.   The defense admitted that Rudowitz had attended a meeting during which a vote was taken to kill three government spies, however, the defense also insisted that Rudowitz did not participate in the actual murders. Depositions provided by the prosecution were suspect and contradictory.  At the hearing, Darrow warned Commissioner Foote that there were about 20,000 men in the United States under political asylum from Russia, and that if Rudowitz was extradited; all the other political refugees would “go with him as fast as the Russian government can furnish the means and the guns to execute them.”  Foote listened to two weeks of testimony.  In his closing argument Darrow said, “Czar Nicholas II is plotting to reach the hand of despotism into the United States and drag back, no man knows how many, political offenders of Russia.”
   

On December 7th Commissioner Foote ruled that Rudowitz could be extradited.   The defense team appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Elihu Root. Roosevelt was wrapping up his presidency as Robert Taft was the President-Elect after the previous month’s national election.  It’s hard to imagine that Roosevelt and possibly Taft weren’t consulted by Root.

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The aformentioned John H. Wigmore was a highly respected expert on the law of evidence and he went over the more than 300 pages of hearing transcripts and produced a report that concluded that Rudowitz was a political refugee and thus should not be subject to extradition. This argument was endorsed by James Parker Hall, the dean of the University of Chicago Law School.  On January 26, 1909, Secretary Root decided that Rudowitz’s crimes were political in nature and he was therefore not extraditable under the treaty between the United States and Russia.  This decision greatly expanded the concept of a a political offence exception (or exemption) in U.S. extradition law and is still felt today.  Coincidentally, an almost identical case was playing out in New York involving the Latvian refugee Jan Janoff Pouren. His adverse decision at the commissioner level was also overturned by Root.
 

Edwin Maxey, Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska wrote an analysis supporting the final disposition of this case in 1909, the same year that Kārlis Ulmanis graduated from Nebraska’s College of Agricultural Sciences.  Kārlis Ulmanis had fled Latvia to avoid arrest for political activity during this same tumultuous period.  He did not return until 1913, when an amnesty was declared.  Ulmanis was the first Prime Minister of Latvia and a dominant figure in Latvia declaring and eventually gaining independence less than a decade later.  We’ll never know if Ulmanis and Maxey ever spoke about Rudowitz.  Ulmanis faced-off against the same combination of German neo colonialists and Russian monarchists on the road to Latvian statehood.  In addition, Ulmanis faced Russian and Latvian communists who were attempting to establish Soviet control over the former Russian provinces. 
 

The complexities of the 1905 Revolution continue to be debated.  It is clear that it had developed differently in the Baltic region than elsewhere in Czarist Russia. It had a distinct radical leftist component but also was a nationalistic manifestation: reflected by dissimilar actors like Ulmanis and Rudowitz.Christian Rudowitz quickly faded from the headlines. The story became muddled when numerous reports were made of people circulating around Chicago and identifying themselves as Rudowitz for their own purposes.   

Rudowitz moved to the Gleason, Wisconsin area in the mid 1930’s. His name reappeared in December, 1937 when he became associated with “the Robinson/Rubens affair”. This case involved prolific Soviet spy Arnold Ikal, who was active in the United States for several years. Like many GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) agents at the time, Ikal was Latvian. 
 

Rudowitz's naturalization papers were apparently used to create an additional identity for Robinson/Rubens/Ikal. Rudowitz explained that his naturalization papers disappeared during the course of registering to vote in Chicago four years earlier; he wasn’t implicated in any criminal wrongdoing. Christian Rudowitz (Rudewitz) is buried in the Gleason Cemetery, which is separate from the Latvian cemetery. The Gleason (Lincoln County), Wisconsin area was the home of a Latvian colony beginning in 1897.

– Artis Inka

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