The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-27
THE SIXTEENTH DAY.
AS to the RollcalI and the ChIseI
Marks on the Door-SloW
PROGRESS.

Not great deal of progress was made in
the defense of Theodore Durrant yester-
day. Most of the day was spent in argu-
ment between the counsel on both sides
and the court concerning the adniissibility
of evidence touching two points.
The first was with reference to the chisel
marks on the door OF the beltry. and the
second was on the admission of the roll
call OF DR.. Cheney's lecture at Cooper
Medical College on the afternoon of
April 3.
1t was generally thought honors were
about equally divided on these two points
between the prosecution and the defense.
1t was the purpose of the defense to show
that the marks on the door jamb were
made by the chiseJ found in the tool chest
in the pastor study. To this end the door
itself and its frame were brought down
from Emmanuel Church and placed on
the stand, among the multitude of other
silent witnesses.
There was then a deal of questioning
concerning these marks-their size, their
location, their description and all that
but in the end Detective Cody told Mr.
Barnes and the jury and the court in gen.
eral that upon examination by a magni-
fying-glass the first mark was AN old one
and had been painted over, and that the
second mark was plainly seen to be, when
the door was shut, the mark left by the use
OF a Jimmy" So it would appear that
the chisel found in the pastors study did
not produce the marks on the belfry door
lamb. At least this was the last evidence
offered on the subject yesterday by the
very witnesses the defense had called
to prove the contrary.
And the end of it all was an understand
ing that when sufficient testimony has
been introduced touching the condition of
the door at present and the state of good
or bad preservation it may be in the jurors
will be permitted to examine the marks
for themselves and form their own con-
illusions.
Another point that was discussed in the
morning concerned the shoes found in the
pastors study. There was dark spot on
one of them. But Sergeant Burke tes-
titled that when the shoes we're first ex-
amined the police came to the conclusion
that the spot was not blood stain and for
that reason had paid no further attention
to the shoes.
However, Sergeant Reynolds had pre-
served that shoe. The spot was still on it.
He put chalkmark around the spot, and
the shoe was added to the long, long list of
stilI-Iife exhibits.
Came DR.. Cheney then and his rollbook
of the lecture delivered by him on the
afternoon in question. Came also, almost
at the same moment, a lengthy argument
over the admissibility of that rollbook.
which was not concluded till late in the
afternoon.
The rollbook showed that w. II. T. Dur
rant, as Mr.. Deuprey never fails to call
him, was not absent from that lecture.
That is, there is no absent mark, or A,
after his name. But neither DR.. Cheney
nor Student Gray, who made the tally and
called the names. has any knowledge of
whether Durrant was present and an
swered his own name, or whether the
"nere" was called out by some one else in
the room.
As to the admissibility of the book, Mr..
Barnes soon discovered that it was not the
original book of entry, and that the en-
tries had first been made on a page headed
"March 81. and subsequently erased and
transferred to the page marked April 3.
Upon these grounds he fought stoutly the
admission Of the record, but Mr. Deuprey
finally triumphed, and the book went in as
evidence-or, more accurately, as an ex-
hibit of the defense.
Judge Murphy remarked that in his
opinion the case was similar to that OF a
bookkeeper who should have made cor
rection in his books. And the fact is that
Student Gray was there to testify that he