Bryan daily eagle and pilot. [volume] (Bryan, Tex.) 1909-1918, 1911-08-29
AN AWFUL MISTAKE
OF THE LAW
Innocent Man Convicted of Murder or
Circumstantial Evidence and I'M
prsoned Twenty Years.

New York, Aug. 29-His heart filed
with bitterness toward this land of
the Free which for him was a coun-
try of suffering and Imprisonment, An
drew 10th, who spent twenty years
behind the bars of Pennsylvania
prison for a murder he had not COM
mitted, sailed today for his native
home in Austria, never to return to
these shores.
10th had been in this country only
a short time, and was working hard
to support his wife and children and
in the hope of acquiring home and a
competence, when he was arrested on
the charge of killing a fellow work
man. He was only an ignorant for
eigner," unable to speak English, and
as circumstantial evidence pointed TO
his guilt, he was right speedily con-
victed and whisked away to prison
There was no laws delay" in Toth's
case. Behind the grim walls of the
penitentiary he was soon forgotten,
and might have died there had not
another, after twenty years, confessed
to the crime of which 10th was wholly
innocent. Toth's sons, grown to man.
hood, had for years spent all their
earnings in attempts to prove their
fathers innocence. Toth's wife, heart
broken and hopeless, despairing at
last of justice in this strange land
where poor men are rushed off TO
prison on fiimsy suspicious, returned
to Austria to end her years. In the
little town of Sengyel Falu she Is anX-
iously awaiting the old, broken man.
with the prison pallor on his face,
who sailed today 10 join her.
Free America" scoffed 10th, with
the bitterness of twenty years OF
hatred in his voice. do not tell me
of free America. 1t has robbed me OF
my wife and of my youth, of every
thing that makes life worth living, and
| shall be glad to shake its dust from
my feet. If you could realize the an
guish | suffered for twenty years, two
months and nineteen days-even the
days seem like years in a prison cell
you would not wonder that feel anger
and sorrow in my heart toward the
government.
"You do not know what it is to sit.
day after day, looking up at a narrow
strip of sky, crying until your eyes
are so dry that they hurt. You do not
know what it is to have wife that
trusts and loves you, and children
whom you most want to respect you,
beginning to believe after all that you
may be a murderer. If you could un
derstand these things, you would know
why prisons are hell for the guilty and
doubly hellsh' for the innocent. And
after all this, they thrust me out in
the world, broken and old, unable to
make living-and they give me a
suit of cheap clothing and five dollars
in cash. Five dollars for twenty years
of labor-for twenty years taken out
of the life of a man innocent OF all
wrong-five dollars to assuage the
grief of a woman for twenty years
deprived of her husband and forced
to toll like slave for her subsistence
five dollars to atone to my children
for the education and opportunities
they might have had could have been
left free to provide for them-for all
this, and much more that / could never
put into words, five dollars!
Some people blame me because |
talk so. They say it was only mis-
take, that nobody was to blame, that |
ought to accept it in philosophic man.
ner and be thankful that am free. ]
am thankful, of course, but this phil