New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1905-08-09
"Not Guilty. or s.Innocent."

''Not Guilty. or s.Innocent."
! After three trials by jury, before the
judgement of twelve of his fellowmen,
the third judgment becomes omnipotent,
and George r Koch goes freed from
the alleged guilt of having murdered
Louis A. Gebhardt. He goes absolute
ly free. Though the crime is still unas-
soiled, though suspicion isstill broad
cast, is not yet focused, Koch is no
longer under suspicion. He is as inno-
cent of that blood guilt as though he
had never been attainted, as innocent
as the child in the cradle, as the preach
er in the pulpit. There will still be
those who insist on Koch's guilt, but
those are absolutely wrong. Any man
who states such a thing, who insists on
it after this decision of yesterday, is
guilty of treason to the state. For the
state through its vox juris has declared
Koch "Not Guilty.
There is immense relief in this de-
clsion. For nine months the murder
has been a mystery and for eight
months there has been wonder whether
the man arrested would prove to be the
murderer. Three slow, irritable trials
attempted to demonstrate the guilt, to
transform the suspect into the convict
There was merely circumstantial evil
dence, and there was circumstantial
evidence of the thinnest. most incon-
elusive sort. AS many man on the
street has said: cit would be shame
to hang ayellowdog suchevidence. -
Two juries failed to see unanimously
the lack of evidence in the evidence.
The third returned verdict on the
first ballot. Koch is free, and there is
no longer any suspicion directed to-
ward him by people who think under
the aegis of the law. The man might
have forfeited his life before the ami
versary of November first. AS it is, he
| walks out free man among his fellows.
The difficulty with trial of this sort
is that the accused man can never re-
cover his exact preceding status with
his fellows, his status with himself, or,
to speak more mathematically, his f.
nancial status. In the case of George
r. Koch there will be less of the sus-
picion and distrust WHICH usually waits
on the freeing of suspect. The people
of his community have been divided,
but that large half who profess his
friendship are of the most loyal kind,
of race which is of all things most
loyal to its own. Teutonic New Ulm
will not reject Koch because he has
been suspected of blood guilt. But,
nevertheless, there must always follow
this young man something of remem-
brance, if nothing of suspicion. And
| for this reason life cannot be to him
| what it would have been had not the
fatal suspicion attached itself where it
did. He will always be conscious; no
man can forget such a thing as that.
And it is more than possible that Koch
knows more of the murder than he need
confess; it is even possible that he &C
copied trial to cover a friends guilt,
although Of that we know nothing. In
any event, life external and internal
will be different with him. 1t cannot
be otherwise.
1t is with his financial Status that we,
as citizens who have attempted to con-
struct state machinery which shall
| deal forth justice, should be most con-
cerned. Koch has stood three trials.
The expenses of such defense must be
i borne by him. They cannot run much
short of fifty thousand dollars. That
), must a man pay for the privilege OF
establishing his non-guilt. 1t seems a
tremendous price to pay. The state
has libeled him; it has declared him
suspected of guilt It fails to prove
!, its libel. But, instead of money re-
compense, such as results from any
{ civil libel, the man is made to pay the
!, heavy bill of proof himself. The man
is pronounced not guilty, and nomoney
recompense given. In France he would
be pronounced innocent, and an in
demnity paid. We might learn some
thing from Napoleonic Jurisprudence,
toward which we profess superiority
,l-St. Paul Dispatch
3 Public is Aroused.