The Lafayette gazette. [volume] (Lafayette, La.) 1893-1921, 1903-08-01

MAY ESCAPE THE GALLONS.
The Board of ParllOIl$ ltccOlll-
mcndlS Communication in
l3atSOn'S Case.
j Judge Miller Refuses to Join
in the Recommendation

\. f. BatSon, who was twice convicted a
Lake Charles for the murder of the Ear
family and who is under sentence o
death, may not hang. Attorney Genera
| Guion and Lieut.. Governor Estopinal have
recomme nded Communication from hang ing
to life Imprisonment. Under the provision:
of act liz of 1890 a life sentence in the peni
| Tertiary may be reduced to term of fif,eer
years. Hence, it will be seen that if the
governor acts favorably on the Boards re-
man.
| When asked for the reasons of the Board
| action, General Guion said:
| s.We received several numerously signed
petitions asking that Batson's sentence be
committed to life imprisonment. We also
received a petition asking that the sentence
be not interfereI with. We considered
them seriously, ane: found among the signers
TO one of them asking for Communication the
| name of John w. Downs, the witness who
swore to the Identification of Ba,son as the
! person found IN the possession of the live
stock of Ward Earl, in Lake Charles, who,
with others, asks that the sentence be COM
muted because the conviction was based en-
tirely on circumstantial evidence, not of a
nature suffi cient to justify the verdict and
sentence.
'sThe District Judge who tried the case
has refused to recommend communication
of sentence, and | regret that have not
been able to have him sit with in the
bearing. He wired me that he could not
come here before the Ist of August, and
expect to be GU, of the city about that time,
and afterwards, of course, it would have
been too late. We have, therefore, been
compelled to rely upon the petitions pre-
sented to us and the statements made by
others concerning the facts brought out at
the trial. There was no stenog:aphic report
of the trial. l tried to get a transcript, and
found that none had been kept. 1 saw some
persons, and wrote to a number of witnesses.
eve believe justified in the State
ment that Batson was no, identified by any
one as the person who had left the Earl gun
with gunsn,th for repairs, nor was any
evidence introduced that was, in opin-
ion, sufficient to connect him with the per-
who had left the missing watch in the
hands of the jeweler in Lake Charles. The
gunsmith, who testified about the who
left the gun with him to be repaired, de-
scrbed the person as man of medium, size,
although Batson is, reliably in
formed, fully feet in height, and weighed
at that time about $50 pounds. !'he jeweler
did not identify him either, and failed to
give any satisfactory description.
eve believe justified in stating
that the only dentifi alton of Batson by
the witness Downs and several others, who
testified that he the in possession
of the live stock of Ward Earl, which he of
1,h, ,borI
witnesses who testified that he was not the
man in possession of this stock A street
car driver says thu, he nearly into the
stock, and he is the who was
driving it was not Batson. G ranting, how
person in possession of the live stock, in
spite Of the doubt created that it might have
been another person, we did not feel justi-
fed in refusing Communication of sentence.
We did not consider that such possession of
the live stock of Ward Earl conclusive
presum pton OF his guilty connection with
the murder of the Earl family. 1t might
have been sufficient, coupled with other
facts unexplained, to warrant his conviction
for larceny, but we hardly felt warranted in
extending the presumption any further.
The law covers that point. Possession of
personal property, such as a mans watch
that he known to have, pin, any
thing of that sort that man had on his per-
might justify the presumption of muir
der, but in the of live stock, it is not al
together improbable that man might be
murdered in his house and another man
steal his stock without any collision with
the murderer.
''After fully considering all the facts and
the law, and believing that there was suffi-
cient doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, in
view of the fact that he convicted al
together circumstantial evidence, we
were constrained to recommend that the
sentence in this be commuted to life
imprisonment in the State Penitentiary.'
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