Case ID: howell-np_1/html/0196-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Kalamazoo Circuit.
    
    ROBERT CHENEY vs. HARMON N. BARBER.
    
      Extracts from the Closing Argument of Hon Olia/rles 8. May, Counsel for Plaintiff.
    
    Action for seduction of plaintiff’s daughter.
    If the Court Please, Gentlemen of the JuRy:
    I can hardly exaggerate the seriousness and importance of a case like this. These facts touch to the quick the deepest and the tenderest places in our human hearts and lives. There sits a father, bent and bowed with a weight of shame and sorrow which no language of mine is adequate to describe — his beloved daughter, his only child, his last earthly stay and comfort, sent all untimely, in the bloom of her youth, by man’s baseness, to a sad, dishonored grave. The junior counsel for this defendant in his opening to you, and the senior who followed him (Hon. J. C.' Burrows), both thought it necessary, for some reason, to warn you against what I should say, and my manner of saying it. God forbid that any thought or purpose such as they have ascribed to me, should enter my mind at such a time as this. I know not indeed if I have any power to move you, but if I have, it must confie from above, and I pray the Heavenly source of all inspiration to give me the power to-day to plead this old man’s cause before you.
    Gentlemen, these are the blessed Christian holidays, the season consecrated in all the Christian world to human charity and good will, hallowed by all the memories and recollections of onr boyhood years; and as the music of this beautiful festival even now reaches our ears from the gay world without, we sit here solemnly to inquire by whose hand was this young life crushed out of this bright world — by whose dark and damning deed was stilled this once happy voice, and this young heart once as bounding and full of life and hope as any that follow the merry Christmas bells to-day? Surely the occasion, the time, the question before us and its surroundings — all these must speak to you with most impressive language of the high duty which you are to perform, and no words of mine are needed to emphasize it.
    Gentlemen, all this testimony concedes — there is, there can be no dispute — that here is a most touching and pathetic tragedy. Who is the author of this •domestic desolation — nay, of this most wicked murder ? Let us run the lines of investigation backward from this newly made grave. Prompted, inspired and governed by the high duty which we owe to society, to justice and the law, let us pursue this investigation. He who has wrought this deed of hell shall not escape though he robe himself from head to foot in blackest falsehood. There is no place in the universe of God where a lie is safe or at rest. Cover itself as it will, hide itself as it will, sooner or later it will be hunted down and discovered, and the broad light of the open day shall stream into its hiding place, and make it stand exposed to all the world. Who then, gentlemen, is the guilty man? Let us look for him in this testimony. & * # * * •/• * * * *
    1 have shown you now, gentlemen, the number and character of the witnesses for the plaintiff, their means of knowledge and the naturalness and consistency of their testimony. This testimony may be circumstantial, but it is nevertheless conclusive — it is such as the law. receives and it enforces conviction. In its broad, clear light we may trace the guilty relations of this defendant with Alice Cheney. Here is the beginning, the middle, and the end. He, a man of fifty and childless, takes this motherles girl of thirteen into his family. She is of fine form and handsome features, just developing into a fair and beautiful young womanhood. Like another infamous Appius Claudius, this defendant is smitten with the charms of this budding Virginia, and hastens to adopt her, binding himself solemnly by that writing, which is in evidence before you, to be to her as a father and a protector. Then the evidence shows the unmistakable fondness, the desire to be in her company, the frequent interviews, the rides with her alone, the little presents, and trinkets and favors, so well calculated to please a girl’s fancy and to call out her gratitude.
    With the powerful and natural influence thus acquired over the innocent and unsuspecting victim, the testimony brings the parties down to that fall of 1872, and the beginning of the winter following. This is the immediate period to be examined by you, for the testimony conclusively shows — indeed it is not contradicted- — that at about this time Alice Cheney hecame pregnant of a child. Who was the father of this child, conceived under such circumstances? I have shown you the household of the defendant at this period — I have shown you all the strong and overwhelming probabilities which point to him — and to no other.
    
      But, gentlemen, this is not all. The defendant’s subsequent conduct throws a flood of damning, convicting light upon this question. You know the old adage that “Actions speak louder than words.” It is so here. By what he has done in this matter this defendant has as conclusively admitted his guilt as though his own mouth had uttered it. In the eyes of the law conduct is admission. For this guilty intimacy had borne its fruit, and then came the struggle to conceal. Then came the artifices, the old women’s remedies, the drugs, the appliances of abortion. In vain, in vain! Like Eugene Aram, his every effort at concealing only showed more plainly the damning evidence of his guilt. Then the infamous Coppleberger appears upon the scene, and the tragedy hastens to its close. The order of nature could not then be balked, and nature would soon make her fearlul revelation. The handy villain fell quickly into the plan suggested to him to marry the girl and take her to her relatives in Ohio. I care not for specific proof of conspiracy — it is plain enough that the defendant made haste to embrace this opportunity. No man saw the price of blood paid; but to be sure that the work should be done, the defendant follows his co-conspirator and the poor victim of his lust to Ohio, where, sick and worn, drugged and lacerated, she yields up her young life and goes down to her grave, at the very spot where her happy childhood, encircled by a mother’s love, first opened upon the world. There, in the midst of the last sad scenes, was the defendant, still trying to conceal, but still disclosing the evidences of his guilt — telling falsehood upon falsehood about her condition to Boynton, Mrs. Wilcox and others, as you remember — fairly hovering over the dying pillow and the grave itself to turn away suspicion and stifle investigation. Q, gentlemen, it is a damning chapter of guilt and ruin. From out that untimely grave a solemn voice must have sounded in tjie ears of this defendent, — “And I/ust, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth death. ” ****#•**■**■■**•
    And yet this man says he was “a father to this girl,” that “he loved her as a daughter.” Gentlemen, this is a dangerous, a fatal admission. He could not love her as his own child, for Nature has reared in the parental relation her strong and eternal barrier to lust — a barrier which only brutes can pass. Here there were no ties of blood to hold back the seducer.
    ***********
    Gentlemen, the senior counsel for the defendant, who closed the argument for him, did not cease to ring the changes upon the fact which fell out in the evidence that the neighbors and fellow townsmen of this man had raised a purse to help pay the expenses of this prosecution. Again and again did the counsel come back to this charge, and make the court room echo to his denunciations of this “Stock Company.” O, short-sighted advocacy? Cannot the counsel see how damaging all this is to his client! What a confession is this ! A man whose character a.nd deeds are so odious and vile that his own neighbors, the substantial and solid men of that township, as these men are, are constrained to concerted action and effort to bring him to justice! Who can blame them ? Gentlemen, I know the men of that town, and in the days of my boyhood I have seen them band together and make common cause to hunt down some wolf or bear that had borne away the lamb of the. early flock. God of mercy! this human wolf has borne away and killed this old man’s tender lamb, and shall not his own neighbors start on the trail of blood ?*****
    Verdict for plaintiff — $5,000.
    (December 26, 1876.)
    0. W. Powers, George M. Buck and Chas. S. May for Plaintiff.
    
      Dallas Boudeman, H. F. Severens and J. C. Burrows for Defendant.