Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-09-28

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To the Members Of the American Bar
Association:
To the Lawyers Throughout the United
States:
Allow me to take advantage of the
little repute which ! have gained among
you, by the authorship of a law book,
for the purpose of your atten-
ton to the wrongs inflicted on one of your
craft and enlisting your sympathies in
his favor.
Caleb Powers, of Knox county. Ken
lucky, a graduate of two respectable law
schools. lately elected by the people of
Kentucky secretary of state, a young
man of fair and noble mien. whom you
can not ssee or converse with without a
feeling of confidence and affectlon,lS now
locked up in the Jail at Louisville pend
ing an appeal from a sentence of life inn
prisonment, awarded by the circuit
court at Georgetown for his alleged part
IL the murder of the late Senator Goebel.
1t is our duty as lawyers to presume
that decision given by the proper trl-
bunal is Just; we nave the correlatiVe
right ITO presume, when the decision OF
a question is purposely left to the wrong
set of men, hat it will be wicked ana
unjust.
When O'Connell was brought to trial for
sedition before the Assizes, at Dup1n'
IN 1915, MS CouuSel NldllSliSCo AN oAAoS
of Jurors. because for some reason or
other. ffty-nine names of the jury list
had been left out in the copy made for
drawing the jurors, claiming that THESE
names had been omitted in the interest
of the crown. The conviction was, on
this ground, reversed by the House OF
Lords. Almost the same thing happened
In the case of the commonwealth against
Caleb Powers. A jury list of three
hundred housekeepers had been made up
-, nl.1 ;,,,,- iSSipoarc nF Scott
county in October, 1899, at a time when
a political murder trial was not thought
of. This. list was naturally fair. men or
all parties appearing very nearly in the
same proportion as they held among the
white housekeepers of the county. Thirty
jurors from that list were drawn out for
the special term. These We're soon eX-
hausted, yielding only five accepted
jurors. Sixty names were left in the
Wheel" The counsel for Caleb. Powers
asked that these names be drawn out
that the jury might be completed from
them. This the judge refused to do: in
stead thereof he sent the sheriff out to
summon a hundred men from so-called
~bystanders; the sheriff took care to sum-
mon them from the farthest northern
end of the county, where nearly every
man was known to be in strong political
opposition to the accused.
The result was a panel made up of
eleven democrats and one republican.
sllS - pCllS lCoSAliS NCplC ny IAS
attorneys for the commonwealth,
though they challenged every other re-
publican that was brought forward. In
a county in which more than one-fourth
of the white voters are republicans and
when the defendant, a republican office
holder, charged With a political crime,
had fifteen challenges and the prosecu-
ton only five, such a result is somewhat
remarkable.
Is the docttine of chances at fault, or
.1- ALo~~ ,N~r ~ ncir
The judge enjoys a great deal OF dis
cretfon not only in passing on challenges
for cause. but also in excusing jurors at
rheir own request; and what he does in
he latter way does not go into the record,
and cannot be reviewed on appea
In this case the excuses of the jurors
we're taken by the judge, While stand
.ng near them about the middle of the
room, in a low, conversational tone,
and in such a manner that neither coun-
viel nor reporters could hear what WENT
On between them.
I do not claim that the course of the
Judge in sending out for b~ystanders.
when there was a number of Jurors
names left in the wheel, was contrary
to the statute law of Kentucky; for in
the winter of 1894 the jury law had been
80 amended as to give to the circuit
judges the discretion of sending for
talesmen. even on the trial of felony
cases; but, that a legislature, regardless
" AIiN iASil ~ LIZ ciit
has vested in the judge the power of
packing the jury whenever it suits his
fancy, does not alter the proposition that
a trial before a jury packed is, in the
classic words of Lord Denman, a de-
fusion, a mockery and a snare. The
judge knew that the case before him
was one arousing the strongest political
feelings, and that the sheriff of Scott
county was a rank partisan, who lacked
the "indiffedence'' which the old books
rn1Ilipn nf q Chhri IF on1 would ahl1Sa biS
trust in the way in which he did.
There is a queer and near coincidence
between the ffty-nine omitted names in
the C'Connell case and the sixty names
left IN the wheel at Georgetown. "
Caleb Powers had against him not only
a partisan judge and a packed jury, but
the attractions of the one hundred
Thousand dollar reward for perjured witt
nesses. which a partisan legislature had
placed in the hands of a rabidly partisan
board: and, moreover, tine wealth of the
decedent, a bachelor, which fell to his
brothers, and which they lavished with
out stint in the employment of counsel,
among these, Thomas c. Campbell, form
erly of Cincinnati, now of New York,
famed as the most INSCRIPTIONS crimi-
nal lawyer of the United States. Four
men testified against him, who professed
to have been in thorough sympathy
with the alleged conspiracy against
Goebel's life; two of these are named as
NSSOLlpilSeo III las aIlulOlillc1ll, yet III
of them was willing to admit that he had
a rational motive for turning against his
friend, such as the immunity which is
usually promised to ~accomplfces who
turn states evidence. They must have
lied in deying my rational motive for
their treachery. Under the law their
testimony was insufficient, unless corro-
= borated from other sources; and each of
them was amply contradicted Oh i'm
peached by men of infinitely higher
standing.
The Indictment charges that one of five
named men, or "someo other person to the
Jurors unknown" killed Goebel, and that
Powers (who was out Of town at the time
of the deed), Taylor, and five others
conspired among themselves and with
The five first mentioned, and counseled
and procured the murder of Goebel. All
this Is highly improbable. While Goebefs
efforts to grasp wrongfuly the govern