Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1881-08-24
Il VERY NARROW ESCAPE.

j
never never y
The speaker was a distinguished
criminal lawyer of nearly forty years
active practice, and whose fame extend
ed far beyond the limits of his own
State.
We had been discussing recent
cause celebre in which, upon purely
crcumstantial evidence, man had
been convicted of an atrocious murder
although many of those most famil-
lar with the circumstances of the case
entertained the gravest doubts about
the justice of his conviction-and had
been swung off into eternity protesting
his absolute innocence with his latest
breath and calling upon God to send
his soul straight-way to hell if he was
not telling the truth.
As most of our party were lawyers,
the conversation, naturally enough,
drifted into discussion of the dangers
arising from convicting accused persons
whose own mouths were closed, upon
purely circumstantial evidence in the
absence of any direct and positive proof
of guilt, and case after case vas cited
in which, after conviction and execu-
tion, the entire innocence OF the sup
posed culprits had been clearly demon
strated. Most of the laymen present
agreed with the distinguished lawyer
whose very positive expression of opin-
ion has been quoted, while majority
of the lawyers contended, with that
earnestness for which lawyers are no.
ted when advocating their own side of
any question, that justice could never
miscarry when careful judges guard
against tie possibility of unsafe ver-
diets by refusing to permit conviction
except when every link in the chain of
circumstantial evidence has been estab-
lished beyond doubt and the whole
chain made so perfect and complete as
to leave no room for any consistent hy-
pothesis of innocence.
The first murder case | ever tried,
said one of them, was stranger than
fiction, as you will admit, and is quite
as remarkable as any of the cases you
have referred to where innocent men
have been wrongfully convicted upon
circumstantial evidence 1t ought to
have been reported as an example of
the unreliability of the direct and posi-
tive testimony of eye-witnesses who
tell what they believe to be the truth
He then related the main points of
what was certainly most remarkable
and dramatic trial, and which consti-
tutes fair offset to some of the men,
orable cases to be found in every work
on circumstantial evidence. TIE mar
rative produced so strong an impress
sion upon my own mind that subse-
quently, with his consent, put it into
the following shape, having first care
fully compared it with his notes of tes-
timony taken upon the trial of the case
1t can be relied upon as absolutely cor
rect, with the exception that l have
used fictitious names, for reasons which
will readily be appreciated when it is
known that most of the actors in the
drama are still living.
One winter evening about eight o.
clock, in the early days of the war, in
the quiet little town of -, while pa
trolling the streets to pick up stra gglers
from the camp on the outskirts of the
town, Corporal Julius Fry was shot
and killed by one of three men of bad
character who were in company and
upon terms of open enmily with the
soldiers. The men were arrested, COM
mitted to prison and brought to trial at
the next term of the court. Two of
them were gamblers and desperadoes
and supposed to have more than once
had their hands stained with human
blood The third, whom / shall call
Short, though bearing an unenviable
reputation, was regarded as one unlike
ly to slay fellow man except under
compulsion of circumstances. On ac-
count of the character of the men and
the trouble they had already brought
rpon quiet, law-abiding citizens, the
sentiment of the whole community was
strongly against them.
In order to clearly understand the
force of the testimony given upon the
trial and the subsequent result it is i'm
portant to bear in mind the physical
peculiarities. dress and general appear
ance of each Of the three prisoners.
| Short was small man of not more
than five feet six inches in height, slen-
der, weighing scarcely 130 pounds,
with bright, fery-red hair and side
whiskers, and at the time of the MUIR
der wore white felt hat and an old
light-blue army overcoat.
Ryan was fully six feet in height, of
robust frame, with black hair and mus
tache. dressed in dark clothes, and
wore black Derby hat
Grey was heavy, broad-shouldered
man of medium height, weighing fully
200 pounds, with full, black beard
reaching nearly to his waist. But as
the evidence subsequently showed that
he had not fired the shot, it is unneces-
sary to describe his appearance more
minutely.
Certainly it is difficult to imagine
two men more unlike than Short and
Ryan or less likely to be mistaken for
each other even by strangers, much
less by their acquaintances There was
no possibility mere 1Or case OF mlSta-
ken identity.
| Short and Ryan were tried together
with their consent-Grey having asked
for and obtained separate trial-and
each was defended by separate counsel.
After the preliminary proof relating
to the post-mortem examination, the
cause of death and the Identification of
the body of the deceased as the person
named in the implement, the Common
wealth called as its first witness wo-
man, Mary Bowen. She bore bad
reputation for chastity, but nobody
questioned her integrity or her purpose
to tell-reluctantly, it is true-the
!, whole truth. The prisoners were all
her friends and were constant visitors
tn tho dripk ki,,r ooIooo oe .x.L;.L IL -