The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1910-01-07
THE lEDBETER VERDICT

The criminal annals of Blue Earth
county fail to record more brutal,
atrocious or cunningly planned murder
than that committed upon the person
of II. j. Ledbeter last May. For
the commitment of this deed, Mrs. Grace
Ledbeter, wife of the deceased, and
Smith, the hired man, were indicted by
the grand jury as the principal actors
In the murder.
eral weeks ago and the verdict rem
dered by the jury was received with
universal satisfaction by the public. In
the trial of Mrs. Ledbeter which closed
last Friday, public sentiment is quite
in contrast with the acqu,Ital found by
the jury and the moral sensibilities of
this community are aroused to a high
degree over the result.
The trial of the accused wife was
closely followed both through the pro-
ceedings published in the newspapers
and daily attendance at the court by
throngs of spectators. Of all trials
held in Blue Earth county, for the
taking of human life, no case in view
compares in interest with that upon
which the sombre curtain has just been
drawn and certainly none that has
caused such universal Indignation among
the people, regardless of class or dis
tinction.
The Free Press has no desire to re-
mi
odium resulting from the case is too
sitting in the nostrils of the public for
a general review of the testimony or
the tactics resorted to to clear the ac-
cused woman.
The feeling is quite general that the
state did not make out nearly so
strong a case against the woman as it
could have done with the material at
hand and which might possibly have
been secured. The failure for this may
charitably be explained in the probable
feeling of those charged with the prose
eution that the woman's guilt, plainly
evident to them, would impress the
jury likewise, hence they relied too con-
fidently upon the Instability of the
jury and too little upon certain in
eliminating circumstances that it is
claimed might have been pressed with
more force and effect.
On the other hand, no art known to
law, no opportunity that could be de-
vised by the resourceful faculties OF
shrewd lawyers and hired assistants
were neglected or omitted by the de.
fel'se. Every straw and technically
were grasped and worked to the limi,
to impress the jury with the innocence
of the accused. The frame work of a
structure of questionable stability was
erected by counsel, tied at the corners
with painted words OF sorry eloquence
and matched with tears of grief and
pity until a concrete wall, embedded
in shifting sands, was built about the
fragil architecture of claimed innocence
that carried conviction to the jury box
il to no one else resulting in verdict
Of mot guilty"
1t seems improbable, if not impossi
BILE, that Smith committed the bruta
murder of Ledbeter alone and unaided
1t seems passing strange, also among
other Improbable things) that this das
tardly deed was enacted under the very
shadow of the caves of his own house
within fifteen minutes after Ledbeter's
wife saw her husband going into the
barn, and che be wholly ignorant, in
nocent and hysterically hypnotized q:
10 his whereabouts. We say thes,
things look inexplicably queer to The
public. But twelve good men anC
true" have assumedly cleared theil
consciences of any reasonable doubt o
the wife's innocence, and as result
Grace Ledbeter, in the eyes of the law
at least, is free woman.
Let us hope that she is as innocen
as the verdict finds her, and ring Thu
curtain down on one of the most vi
ciously planned and brutally executed
deeds known to law or man.