The Carlisle independent., 1909-08-12

SXH IIs JuIlSj Ol lOQS &ydhj K ence whose reverence for dkifkEaEasAz8 the English bench caused him unwittingly to assume the person al appearance of a wearer of the wig and ermine of Blackstonian days Judge Dennett introduced him as Judge Tanner and assured the club that his guest was primed with many reminiscenee of his long career and would gladly furnish the story of the evening. After the pipes of good fel- lowship had been burned for a space Judge Tanner arose and began his story of circumstantial evidence.
 T often wonder" he said, If there Is trial judge of any considerable experience who has not carried some one case as a load on his mind and conscience for years after the verdict Of the jury Is in and the condemned led away to execution. It is a wise provision of the law that makes the jury the judge both Of the law and the evidence, and the judge but the medium through which the law reaches the twelve; and I cannot con- ceiye the condition of mind of those early English judges, before whom, when they had arrived at a conviction or guilt, even the jury was power less. It was from their arbitrary and unreasonable rulings, now happily not held within the power of the judge, hat most of our records of miscarried Justice have resulted.
 Within my own experience there has come one case which I believe is as strange as any of record and which for years, as looked back upon it, caused me to doubt the ability of man ever infallibly to pass judgment upon fellow creature. The parties now are all dead and I tell it for the first time. But to the story.
 ''In a little city on the circuit in which I have held court for more years than I care to think of there was at one time hotel kept by a very respectable man named Jona- than Miller. It was the favorite stop ping place for commercial travellers and thus the most prominent and best paying hotel in the city.
 One evening a jewelry salesman by the name of Robert Conway arrived at the hotel Just before supper. He instructed Miller to send his grips up to his room and remarked in the hear ing of several at the desk that he did not care to have them left in the gen eral baggage room as he was carrying far more expensive line of samples than usual He also asked that the door be carefully locked and the key brought to him.
 Supper over, he fell in with salesman for a shoe house and one for clothing firm and they repaired to the bar where they played cards and drank until II o'clock, when they all retired. It happened that the hotel was well filled and the clothing man and the shoe man had been forced to take a double room together. This room was directly across the hall from the one occupied by the tewelry salesman.
 About two o'clock in the morning the two roommates were awakened by groans which seemed to come from the room of their companion of the evening across the hall
 They arose and without stopping to dress hurried out to see what the trou- ble was. You can imagine their hor- TOT to find Conway, the jewelry man, dead, the bed blood-soaked, and stand ing over him, dark lantern in one hand and bloody knife In the other. Jonathan Miller, the landlord, who trembled violently and gasped inco- herently when they burst into the chamber of death.
 The case seemed black enough against him. There was not a sus- picion in the mind of anyone in the city that he could be otherwise than guilty Yet when taken before a jus tice for preliminary hearing he most stoutly maintained his innocence and told a story which had it not paled into improbability by the side of damning circumstances against him would have been plausible in the ex- treme
 He said he had just reached his room after, as was his custom, sit ting up until train due at half past one, came in. He had not had time to remove his clothing when he, too, heard groans coming from the neigh borhood of Conway's room. Like the two salesmen, he had hurried to in- yestigate, and as a weapon of de fense he had taken the knife He also picked up the dark lantern which he always used in making his last rounds of the hotel and which was still lighted.
 When he reached the jewellers door he was surprised to find it stand Ing open The groans had ceased.