The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1910-12-17
A STORY OF JERSEY JUSTICE.

kSE1J~IlCE;
! secrets. None Of the essential facts
in Mr.. Freeman's statement has ever
been denied.
The Story Of Juryman.
BY Alden Freeman.
j. I was a member Of the December
jury of 1902 for, Essex county. N. J.
On that terrible February 10, 1903,
! which NeWarkers will never forget, I
was still on duty in the grand Jury.
Aside from the horror Of it, which
| grew as we examined the crippled
victims on clutches in the jury room
| or In their cots at the hospital. my
| most vivid recollection was the siren
! uous effort on the part of both
| Chandler Riker and Chief Justice
Gummere to prevent the bringing in
| of an Indictment The jurymen were
! most unanimous in favor of separate
| individual indictments for man.:
| slaughter against various officers of
| the North Jersey Street Railway COM
pany and each member of Il the
! executive committee of the corpora
| ton, and directed the public prosecu-
tor to prepare such Indictments
For a week we kept asking for the
indictments ordered from the prose-
! cutor. Different members of the
| jury in the meantime told me that
they were being approached from the
outside. One man told me he was
offered fifty $1,000 bills by the son
of one of the officers of the COM
! pany 10 use his influence to quash
the indictment. The same man told
me of loans called by financial insti-
tutions of Newark and contracts held
up.
! After this week of suspense, Mr..
! Riker finally brought in an indict-
ment of all the men in bunch in
/ stead of the separate, individual in
dictments offered. I protested with
all the power I possessed, and was ably
supported by some of the finest men
L nave ever met, but the weeks delay
! of the prosecutor had done the work,
! although the trick of the blanket in
| dlctment was fully exposed. '>
MIR. R1ker was greatly excited,
recall that his hands shook as though
with palsy, although his face re-
| NAMED hmm obile: He made his final
effort when he said the chief Justice
| wished US to go before him and let
him advise us. I resented the inva-
sion OF the rights Of the grand jury,
I said that if Mr.. Gummere had any
thing to say to the grand jury, let him
come before us like any other citizen,
| That the functions of the grand jury
and those OF the chief justice are dis
t1nct and separate, and that he had
no right to thus encroach upon the
rights of the grand jury, which was
coordinate part of our judicial, sys-
tenn and the only weapon left in the
hands OF an outraged people with
| which od1ous tyranny can be assailed.
T. Chandler R1ker's plead1ngs finally
prevailed against me in the grand
jury, just as two years later the plead
1ngs of his brother william Riker
CLERK of the supreme court Of New
Jersey III "behalf Of the vested in
terests which control the state Of
New Jersey prevailed against me in
suppressing the Trial of the SERPENT
circulars in. tn e. Colby headquarters,
and committee was appointed to
wait upon the chief Justice. It was
insisted that I should go along
The chief justice received US, and
we found Mr.. Gummere even more
agitated than the public prosecutor.
He also had the violent shaking of
the hands. This particularly noted
in both 1nen. The chief justice made
a long argument against indicting
| He said we must have reasonable
| ground to. show criminal NEGLIGENCE.
! We brought up the warning of Mayor
| Doremus in his message and various
warnings of similar nature by cit
liens, and particularly the words of
the president of the Lackawanna
railroad. Samuel Sloan, who told the
| trolley people before they laid their
rails across the railroad tracks that
there would inevitably be an awful
! slaughter there some day and that
as mere matter of business it would
be much cheaper to carry the trolley
! tracks over the railroad on a bridge
than to pay the damages in civil suits
which would follow the death of the
victims of parsimony
c1ted the testimony of officers of
the trolley company that there were
twenty-one other trolley grade cross
1ngs equally dangerous in Essex coun-
ty, and finally asked the chief justice
II, knowing of the collision of
February 19-I cannot call it an &C.
cident-and the butchery Of the high
school children, would he (the chief
justice) then consider that these troll
ley officials had knowledge of the
danger sufficient to call it criminal
negligence If, while we were disput-
ing nine other school children were
being done to death at any one of the
other twenty-one unprotected, un-
guarded grade crossings over the
railroad tracks?
Mr.. Gummere made no reply, and
we hled out without a word. 49,.
When we returned to the grand
jury the indictments went through