Baltimore daily commercial. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1865-1867, 1866-05-03
Sentence of ProDst.


Judge Allison sOlemnly said:
Anton Probst. you stand at the bar OF this Court
convicted Ofmurder of murder in the first degree A
jury of your own selection pronounced you, after
patient trial, guilty of crime, the punishment
whereof is death.
Without cause, and with malice premeditated.
you took the life of Christopher Dearing. This tho
verdict recorded against you. establishes as fact
Judelally ascertaned. after solemn and impartial
trial IN which your every right most carefully
guarded. No one of the forms, which the law has
dec Jared to be of the substance Of such trial. in the
jealous watch and care which keeps the life of
the citizen and the alien alike has been neglected in
your case stranger IN strange land; alone, but
provided you with able and conscientious counsel;
shielded you from popular violence; watched over
and guarded your life with seepess vigilance; and
by the direct nterpostiOn Of its might and its power
ootaned for you trial according to the forms Of the
Constitution.
All this was secured to you. By none other but by
legal evidence. not in the least degree by your
confession, but by evidence from which there was no
escape most conclusive IN its character, you have
been found guilty Of the commission of one of the
most appalling crimes Of which the records of cvi-
lized Jurisprudence makes any mention.
A felony of murder unparalleled, your heart con-
ceiyed and your hands executed: in plan most COM
prehensive; in minuteness of detail unequaed; in
execution relentless: brutal savage beyond precedent
A husband and father, returning to his home, in
ali the strength and glory OF his manhood-a wife
and mother, toiling for the little loved ones whom
God had given her-tolng at her domestic altar her
humble hreside-a companion of your daily labor
who with you shared your bed, who almost slept in
your arms; at peace with you. the very breath of
whose life you breathed-your fourth victim an in
offensive visitor, whose sex should not have in vain
appealed to your compassion If compassion you pos
sess. had you but thought of the mother who gave
you birth And four helpless children of these slaugh-
tered parents four little ones, who had never done
you harm; of three of these in innocent and happy
childhood you had been the daily witness; listened
to their young and merry voices, and perhaps have
had them play in confidence and trust about you; and
the fourth smiling tender, gentle babe, who had
not yet learned to lisp your name or to know you as
stranger in that hOusehod-whose tiny bloody gar
ments. brought here by other hands, leave testimony
most crushing against the monster, in the shape of
man, who cut and hacked its youngest life away.
of all who gathered beneath the humble roof of
Christopher bearing, but one remains A little.
lonely, solitary boy, saved not by your mercy; for
mercy ycu mad none, put by an interposing ProYi-
dence protecting him from your murderous and
uphfted t axe with which you sought to kil them all
it matters not which, far the legal and moral
guilt Of all these murders committed by you is
cerned, and much more than human eye hath not
seen, you did with malice inconceivable.
almost without motive you won't at your work,
selt-lmposed and eight innocent victims you slew.
Not suddenly not IN tempest OF reslstlesS passion,
but IN the coolness of promedtated design one by
one, at intervals, with solemn pause with calm de-
liberation AID with quenchess thirst for blood,
you ceased not until all that you set out to do was
fully accomplished and you found yourself alone
with the dead. Your triumph was then complete.
Inns Is but poor picture Of your work, and of this
l here remind you, that you may even now at this
dread hour for you, realize, if it indeed be possible
for you to do So the enorty of your deeds of blood
and before God seek for pardon for your crime.
No may limit his power to forgive but You can
find mercy only in redeeming love. Man cannot,
will not dare not pass by unavenged crime so fear
full as to be almost nameless Society demands pro-
tection' and violated laws its vindicaton. But the
OmnipOtent God hath said "Whosoever will LET him
come" To His mercy commend you.
But what you have to do do speedily for the night
Of death casts its shadows already around you Inc
aveuger of blood has followed steadily after you and
in the dar kness of the night the invisible finger of
the Almighty pointed you out to your pursuers and
justice claims you as its own. And that which it
requires to be done hall not be long delayed You
had your success in the execution of your fell pur-
pose but it demands its triumph now in the detec-
tion, exposure conviction and promptest and severe
punishment of the criminal, who had def ed alike
the laws of God and man. and outraged all the nober
sympathes of his nature.
1t only remains for me to pass on You the Judgment
of the law which is that you here the four Judges
rose, and amid breathess silence concluded the
tence Anton Probst the prisoner at the bar be Ia
ken from hence the Jail Of the county of Phadel
phia, from whence you came, and from thence to the
place of execution and that you there be hanged by
the neck until you are dead. And may God have
mercy on your soul!