Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-11-28
MURDERERS' CASES
Hearing Before the U. s. Supreme
Court.
OF Law INVOLVED
Winston, Strather and Smith Want
New Trials.
GREAT INTEREST EXCITED

| ~ LeI<A ~ IL II EASl
In the United States Supreme Court today
Messrs. s. ID. Truitt and Tracy l.. Jefrords
for William Strather and George kearney
and Charles Turner for Charles Winston
ard F. S. X. Smith and Chaplin Brown for
Edward Smith under death sentence
for murder, argued for reversal of the
Court of Appeals and trial court. If sue
cessful these three men will have to be
again tried before a jury.
The question before the Supreme Court
| involves the construction OF the law re-
ducing the cases in which capital punish
nent may be inflicted. It applies to muir
der cases>in all federal courts of the United
States and Is of great Importance and has
attracted attention of many judges and
lawyers throughout the country. District
Attorney Davis represented the govern.
ment.
The Error Charged.
Today's hearing of the cases was granted
October Fl. The act of Congress of Janu-
airy Is, 1897, provides that juries may modi-
fy their verdicts in murder cases by stipu-
lating that the prisoner shall be sentenced
TO term of life imprisonment instead OF
te death penalty. The cases of Strathers,
tlce Bradley In Criminal Court No. =, and
he. it is charged, did not properly instruct
the jury regarding the law covering these
cases.
Bradley s decision, and the cases were then
carried to the Supreme Court of the United
states, which granted a writ of certicrari.
According to Mr.. Smith the justice told
the jury that they only could avail them
selves of the act in cases where there were
some mitigating and paliating circum-
stances, holding that was the true intent
Of the act. To this we could not agree as
there is nothing of this sort said in the act.
the words being: That in all cases the
Jury may qualify their verdict by saying
without capital punishment
The Mems Crimes.
Winston was convicted of the mur!cr of
Emma Winston, his wife. December II.
1897. They lived together at 321 Sd street
southwest
Strather killed Rosa Toibert October Is
1897, with Ratchet. The two had been
living together man ami wife trough
the woman was the wife of another man.
Smith killed Edmona Jackson with 4
Ratchet November u. 1897.
The Governments Claim.
In his brief In behalf of the respondent
Henry E. Davis. attorney of the United
States for the District of Columbia, after
an exhaustive argument of the cases. says.
RAISING from these general observations,
and in support of the statement that the
charge of the trial Judge In the cases at
bar was in exactly the spirit of the Ian
guage of this court in the Sparf case, let
| us recall what the trial court said. As al
ready pointed out in the Winston case, the
court, dealing with the contention of coun-
sci that because the jury had the right to
qualify its verdict it was the juryS duty
so to do. observed that. in his opinion. the
qualifying words should not be added ex-
cept in cases having paliatng circum-
stances which would seem to justify and
require the addition of the qua iiication. He
distinctly tod the jury, however. that it
was its right and privilege in a proper case
to qualify its verdict.
In the Strather case the trial judge dis
tinctly told the jury that he could not con-
troll its action as TO adding the qualifica-
ton. but that the penalty for murder had
not been disturbed by the act of Congress
under consideration. and the jury should
not interfere with it unless the circun-
stances We're such as to satisfy 1t that the
qualification should be added
And i'll the Smith case the trial judge
told the jury that the statute authorized
the jury, if the evidence justified it on its
conscience in SO doing, to qualify its YER
dict by adding the words without capital
punishment
PLAINLY the effect of the courts language
in each case was that the act in question
did not authorize the jury whimsicaly to
abolish capital punishment in any given
case but that the statute did give the jury
power to abolish capital punishment in any
case in which the facts showed 4 less de-
gree of wiifuness or moral turpitude than
in the ordinary case Of murder. In prin-
cipIe this is the same thing that this court
said il the Sparf case, namely, that in
| reaching its decision the jury must in every
Instance be guided by the evidence, and
that under the law it has 10 arbitrary
ROVER to do what the evidence does not
justify.
I'm this connection the Illinois cases
above cited. and which are cited also by the
Court of Appeals of the District in its
opinion. are especially i'll point. In those
cases the court held that inasmuch as the
statute of the state authorized the jury in
4 murder case to fix the penalty in case
of conviction at any punishment from inn
was proper for the jury to hear testimony,
otherwise irrelevant and immaterial and
therefore unlawful which might tend to aid
the jury in reaching a decision as to The
PENALTY. This is nothing more than to
say in another way that the discretion vest
ed by the statute in the jury is to be
ercised upon and guided by the facts and
circumstances of the given case, and this
in substance and effect is what the trial
judge said to the jurieS in the cases at bar
What he said was, in word, that the
statute under consideration was not intend
ed to vest the jury with the arbitrary, will
full or whimsical power to dispense with
the death penalty in a of murder, but
that the object to give the jury the
power or privilege in cases seeming to war
rant it to qualify its verdict to call