The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-29
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 90, 1869.
THE SCHOEppE MURDER CASE

THE SCHOEPPE MURDER CASE
The discussion of the Schoeppe murder case
is continued by some of our contemporaries,
despite the opinion of the Attorney General
sustaining the action of the jury and the
Courts, and the subsequent issue of death
warrant by the Governor. The prisoner has
been remarkably successful in attracting the
sympathies of large number of Jealous and
able defenders, and in exciting deep interest
in quarters where hisimputed crime, in itself,
is abhorred. German societies have been
appealed to for aid in efforts to procure a
pardon, because he is German, and physi-
clans have been summoned to his rescue
because his conviction on insufficient evil
aence might furnish precedent fraught with
danger to innocent NJ. d. s. The evidence
adduced against Paul Schoeppe is over
powering on every point, except on the ques-
tion whether Miss Stennecke did not, after
all, die natural death. That he had strong
motives for numbering her, and that, if she
was poisoned, he alone is the guilty party, is
proven beyond all reasonable doubt. The only
feature in the case worthy of newspaper COM
ment is whether the evidence was sufficient
to Justify the belief that poison or poisonous
drugs were administered by the man who,
under his triple character as lover, heir, and
physician, was devoted in his attentions to
the woman whose sudden death has given
rise to this protracted discussion. The fact
should not be forgotten that this question
was raised at the trial. professional witnesses
pro and con being examined at length, and
that after the prisoners counsel had exhausted
their ingenuity in efforts to create doubt on
this point, the jury still brought in an ad-
verse verdict, notwithstanding the declaration
of the Judge that 1.-THE fact that death oc-
CURED from some unnatural cause, and also
the specific cause of death, as in this case,
that it was caused by poison, must be estab-
lished and proved to a moral certainty and
beyond reasonable doubt, by the prose
cution."
Few who read the proceedings Of the trial
will wonder at the action of the jury. The
physician called in for consultation with DR..
Schoeppe when the sick woman was lying at
the point of DEATH said the symptoms indi-
Gated no natural disease, but induced the be-
lief that she had been overdosed Oh poisoned.
Other physicians who made post-mortem
ease sufficient to cause death. Subsequently
an examination of the stomach and intestines,
made by an experienced chsmist, furnished,
in his opinion, sufficient reasons to justify
the belief that poison had been administered.
A controversy has grown up since the trial in
regard to the correctness Of the opinion Of
the consulting physician, the completeness of
the post-mortem examination, and the accu-
racy of the tests applied by the chemist; but
there has been scarcely point raised in this
discussion which was not raised during the
trial, and passed upon by the jury, after a
full hearing had been granted to both sides.
Amy success which may attend the present
efforts to re-excite doubts in this case will be
attributable mainly to a one-sided argument
and one-sided statements. If the public heard
only the closing speech of the attorneys for
the prisoner, they would see little reason, in
any murder case, for a conviction.