Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1882-12-21
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A glass of water was handed him and he was
allowed to retire from the room for o few mo-
ments.
When quiet was restored, States ATTORNEY
Mills 81, arose and BEGAN his closing address For
the third time since the trial began, he SAID, Il
was his duty to address the jury in behalf of
the people of the state. He stood in the tenn
pie of the social community and saw its walls
defaced and it's sacred altar fires growing dim.
No weak sentimentality engaged his solemn
thought He stood under the social dome, and
he heard million voices crying out: Let the
law of the state, without fear or favor, be hon
estly administered and executed" He asked
the jury to rise with him above the arts of
trickery to those heights of calm serenity
whore justice has her abode and God resides
He referred to the scene last evening, when
this poor widow (pointing to Mrs. Stiles) was
receiving the lashes of the defendants coun-
sci, and speaking of the wrongs and ISLANDERS
to which she had been subjected, said that she
found her consolation with God.
1t was not improper, he continued, at the
outset to compare the methods of the prosecu-
ton with those of the defense The able
counsel for the accused began his case with
charge against the prosecution, and denounced
as an outrage the presence of the widow at the
trial But who had u better right to be here,
to attend the trial of the woman who had muir
dered her favorite child-murdered by har-
lotry. The defense, from the first, was also
characterized by trickery 1t had tried
to impress the belief that the
woman was insane by her conduct
in the courtroom. Again, the defense had
tried to force in much evidence that was I'M
true, and not content with assaiing the moth
er, had assailed the dead husband, his brother
and Mrs Stiles sister, and that, too, without
any foundation for the ISLANDERS that had been
heaped upon them. Another charactt ristic of
the defense had been the undue magnifying of
the sufferings of the accused which Mr.. Mills
compared to those of the mother, who stood
by the graves of her husband and her MUIR
dered boy. The state, however, had resorted
to no such methods of trickery, strategem,
fraud or concealment, and he proposed to rise
above the depths of calumny and SANDER and
devote himself to an investigation of simple
facts.
There Charles Stiles met her in the year
1877. What occurred at that first meeting no
one knew. They came to Chicago, and she
entered house of i'll fame on Eldredge court
Again, she was an inmate of house on
Fourth avenue, in Watson's, and kept house
of her own at No. 10 Clark street We're all
these acts involuntary? Did Charles Stiles
compel her to live life of shame? In the
house of Mrs Fay she was willing inmate,
in defiance of home and moral law.
In the houses in Chicago she gladly greeted
the youth from the country. For five years
she and Charles Stiles lived as man and mis-
tress. The defense spoke of the perils sur
rounding her. We're there not perils snr-
TOuuulllS all SUCH uuuOly TelatlOIS! he Deg
ged the jury to make distinction between
the God-sanctioned union of man and wife
and the lecherous relations Of man and mis-
tress. She was not forced to live with the
murdered man. If he had treated her bru-
tally, why did she not leave him? If for five
did she do it? She was not bound
by that bond of marriage by which
the woman swears to love and be faithful
The ingenious counsel for the defense had
painted only partial picture of these two
lives He had depicted her sufferings, but
why had he not spread OH the canvas the balls
and all the rounds of pleasure enjoyed by her
in those five years? Did she have no pleas
ures? Surrounded by the adulation of men
who visited her in her harlot home amid the
sparkling wine and the flash of sin-bought
gems, had she no feeling but OF sin and suf-
fering?
The defense had dwelt upon her supersti-
tious nature, and in graphic colors had painted
her visions f the resurrected dead Who was
not superstitious: he asked What man
could walk at the dead of night through
graveyard, looking upon the cold, ghostly
see the faces of the dead? She had
burned candles and carried charms
about her neck. The sailor, climbing the
quivering mast of the tempest tossed ship,
had his superstitions-yet was he lunatic?
The sweet girl, blooming in the beauty of in
cheek and the sparkle of goodness in her eye,
nailed the horseshoe above her chamber door,
and at night, when she laid her rlnglet-
crowned head upon the pillow, took good
night look at the horseshoe, and dreamed. |
Was the sweet girl a lunatic? He continued
in this strain, dealing in metaphor, brill
liant denunciation, and cutting sarcasm, sheer
ing at the defense of insanity as wholly unten-
able and utterly ridiculous ii this case. At the
road-house of Otto Ernst she had stopped and
twice ordered beer She spoke to the proprie
tor almost jocularly about her predicam, 1T
Was that insanity? One by one, he said, the
fimsy pretexts of the defense fell shattered
before the hoodlight of investigation and truth.
She said she was going to the Palmer house
to kill that man. Even if she did have
inflicted by Charles Stiles, that was no cause
of self defense. The law says that there can
be no self-defense when the murderer goes
around and seeks his victim. She went to the
Palmer house, full OF hate and well weaponed
She obtained entrance into Charles Stiles
ger boy. And. in just four minutes
she fired two shots from her re-
volver, and the man reeled and fell in
his night-clothes in the hall dead. He did not
say that her mind was in healthy state on
the morning of the 10th of July. No ones mind
state. Looking at the case fairly" he asked,
"do you not see that there was no justification
for this deed? 1t was a calm, premeditated,
deliberate murder And the plea of insanity
is sham, pretense, and fraud"
The case he said, was not fight between
the dead man and the woman, nor between the
state and great lawyer. 1t was the people
asking for the punishment of crime His zeal
in the case sprung from the fountains of his
love of justice and the people. He would do
no one wrong, and would rather part with his
right arm than do wrong to any one.
Before he would stoop to the trick and
frauds of the defense, he would delve in the
mines of the earth, and, begrimed with the
sweat of honest toll, labor-a man innocent of
Injustice The woman on trial had committed
a murder. Two bullets had been fired from
her revolver, one finding a lodgment in the
heart OF Charles Stiles, the other against the
dome of society.
When Mr.. Mills concluded, Judge Gardner
said he would not instruct the jury until the
next morning as the instructions we're 80 vol
luminous he could not get through before the
time set for adjournment The jury looked
surprised and disappointed, and as court ad-
journed the great audience surged in the di-
rection of the prisoner to look upon her face.