Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1911-10-21
JURY IN WIFE MURDER CASE OUT JUST THIRTY MINUTES AND '
 RETURNS VERDICT OF GUILTY
ATTORNEYS APPEAL
Defendant Received Verdict Indiffer- ently-Crfme Horrible One
 Will Ask New Trial.

After thirty minutes deliberat1On a jury in the Jefferson circuit court Friday afternoon returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first de- gree in the case of the State against William T. Nichols, who killed his wife, Mrs. Minnie E. Nichols, at his home on the Warren road, four miles Southwest of Pine Bluff, on the morn ing of September 16. The defendant received the verdict as indifferently as has marked his conduct during the progress of the four days trial and even during the time that he spent on the witness stand Thurs day, when he related the cold facts of the horrible crime, he displayed absolutely no feeling.
 The verdict of the jury Friday is significant from the fact that it is the first of it's kind returned in a white mans case in this county in the last twenty-five years. If Nich- ols pays the penalty for his crime on .$he gallows he will be the frs white man who will have been hang eY in this county since the Civil War. Only in two other instances have similar verd cts been returned in the Jefferson circuit court since that time. Tn one case the defendant died before his execution. In the other his sentence was commuted and the condemned man was given 21 years in the state prison.
 The decision of the twelve men in the Nichols case was not unexpect- ed. The nature of the crime natually Io h;,,Yy hot escape the gallows. Despite the fine defense put up by his attorney, J. M. Shaw, who made a most forceful argument before the jurors in an eff fort to induce them to reduce the punishment to murder in the second degree, the jurors relied entirely up- on the States evidence to render their decision And the State only introduced four witnesses, One eye witness, and another of the four was Corner Williams who described the wounds on the dead woman's body. ,, The opening argument was made by District Attorney T. Havis Nixon. He said that the evidence of counsel in case of this kind was to aid the jury in properly arriving at just con- clusion from the evidence in the case and to assist them in applying the law to the conclusions thus arrived at He argued that this case was barren of the necessity of the assistance of counsel along this line for the reason that the testimony on the part of the State and defense all uniformly show ed that the defendant committed one of the most horrible vrimes ever enacted in the county under circum- stances that were not justified and under conditions in which there was nothing to be urged in mitigation of punishment The deceased, he said, who was the wife of the defendant and who had been abandoned and her children taken from her and carried to the home of his parents, not at all friendly with her, had only gone out to get the custody of her children for few days in pursuance of an order Of the chancery court.
 MT. Nixon said when she arrived at the Nichols home it was admitted by the defendant himself that her conduct was orderly and that she was pleasant and agreeable, and when she attempted to take the chii- dren away with her, he walked from the gallery of his residence, where he was sitting, to the yard where his wife was, and without any warning cut her throat which caused her