The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1912-05-23
is THIS ANOTHER GENTRY CASE.

A justice who is a candidate for
reelection up Tulsa way, together
with a prosecuting attorney, who is
also a candidate for reelection, have |
bound a woman over to the next sit !
ting of their district court for COM |
plicity in the murder Of her hus-
hand.
This has been done on the most
decidedly circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence, backed up
and abetted by the evidence of a
paid detective-an employe of an or
Iganized office force of self-styled
man catchers.
The woman in question may be
as guilty as Cain-that is not the
uuestion-but the methods adopted
by the enforcement law officers in
securing her binding over to the dis
trict court were most repreh ensible.
Following closely upon the footsteps
of the Gentry case in the courts at
,Oklahoma City, the case wherein
the wife of the murdered man receiv-
ed a life sentence in the penitentiary
while the acknowledged slayer of
her husband is, through the conni-
vance of the law permitted to pursue
the path OF daily happenings purged
Of the crime and unwhiped by the
of the crime he was a self-confes-
sed violator.
Mrs. Gentry may have been guilty
as the devil himself and Mrs. Reuter-,
the woman bound over by the Tulsa
justice, may be just as guilty as was
Mrs Gentry. But the guilt of the
parties in either case has nothing to
do with the methods adopted by the
state in securing the conviction in
the one case and the binding over to
the higher court in the other.
The criminal calendar up in Tulsa
shows that, during the past twelve
months there have been fourteen
murders without a conviction. Has
the states attorney been so badly out
classed that he has, up OF the time
Of tn present case, suffered thirteen
guilty ones To- escape from the lash
of Justice, or have the sheriff's Of
icers, in each and every case arrest
ed the wrong parties?
or this point we know nothing and
care less, but we do think that when
q prosecutor so far oversteps the
traditions and the dignity of the
most learned of the professions as to
assail the character of the widow OF
the murdered man, upon the film
siest OF circumstantial evidence, in an
effort 10 fasten the crime upon her,
that IL is time something should be
done
ANY man. he he a prosecuting at
tornev or a plain citizen, who attacks
the character of any woman, save
on the very strongest of prima facie
evidence, is guilty of a most repre-
hensible act. The good name OF
womankind has been most sacred
thing with the men Of civilized ma
tions Of the world for thousands and
thousands of years. From the time
when the mother to be of Christ
child was taken among strangers TO
protect her name from the forked
tongue of foul SANDER. on to the
present time ii has been one of the
boasts of our increasing civilization
that the good name Of all of the
sex that brought the Son Of God into
tine world be protected from the
tainting breath of scandals fostering
Dostrils. And when a states attor-
ney so far forgets himself and pros
titutes the profession of which he is
a member by seeking to smirch the
good name Of the widowed defendant
upon the evidence of paid detective,
whom the very dogs in the case re-
fused to believe in an endeavor to
80 bias the minds Of the people that
thev will convict this woman, wheth-
or guilty or innocent-when he does