Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-01-17


DR.. HUGHEs-EFFoRr TO SECURE THE Con-
MUTATIoN OF HIS SENrENcE.-Ihe following
petition has been in circulation several DAYS,
seeking signers. 1t was drawn up by DR..
Thayer, and is being offered for signatures
by several gentlemen of this city and coun-
ty. We notice that several hundred sigma
lures have already been obtained. 1t is
rumored that Rev. j. A. Thome, the spirit
ual adviser of DR.. Hughes, will soon go to
Columbus for the purpose of presenting the
petition to Gov. Cox and praying him to
commute the sentence of the prisoner, as
therein requested.
The petition runs as follows:
To His ErceAency the Governor of the State
of Ohio:
Your petitioners, residents of the county
of Cuyahoga and the city of Cleveland, in
said State, respectfully ask that the SEN
tence ofdeath, passed upon John W. Hughes.
convicted OF murder in the first degree at
the November term of Court, within and for
said county, be committed to imprisonment
for life at hard labor in the penitentiary.
And for cause your petitioners say that
the trial, resulting in said conviction, was
AN40o No tAAAO NV ~ q
under a great pressure Of excitement and
prejudice against the prisoner; that while
your petitioners do not deny that the
trial was in itself impartial, yet it is
proper to affirm that the prisoner
was denied the presence of two important
witnesses by the Courts refusal, under the
rule to continue the cause on the defendants
application, compelling him in lieu thereof
to abide by his statement of their testimony,
that said testimony (Which was the testi-
mony of two competent and skillful medical
men possessing peculiar means of knowl-
edge) together with the testimony of several
of the leading physicians and medical men
in said community, given at said trial, tended
strongly to show that the effect of intoxicat-
ing liquors, proven and admitted to have
been taken in large quantities at the time of
the commission of the crime, operating on
the defendants peculiar temperament and
organization, might have, and probably did
superinduce such a condition of mind as
to incapacitate him from forming a deliberate
purpose. That a faint of insanity was proven
to have existed in the line of his immediate
and remote ancestors, but by reason of the
proof on this point being principally con-
fined to England, it was unable 10 be made
as fully as the facts warranted, as we are
led to believe. That the prisoners conduct
before the homicide, at the time thereof and
after, was extraordinary, and to a great de-
gree inexplicable upon any other hypothesis
than some mental bewilderment or aberra-
ton. That the prisoner is a stranger and a
foreigner without means or friends, and
whose sole vice, as far as shown, was the
habit of intemperance and an unfortunate
connection with the deceased victim of his
illicit love and phrenzy. That the prisoner
served the country of his adoption faithfully
during the war of the great rebellion, rising
from the ranks to the position of Post Hospi-
tai Surgeon at Vicksburg, and that in the
opinion of the undersigned the commuta-
ton of sentence above prayed for would be
a fit exercise of executive clemency, and
would satisfy the ends of justice.