The Seward gateway., 1915-10-15

not lessened by the medieval cage, and the two fantastically costumed carbineers who guarded him, with their Napoleonic hats gaily cockaded and their decorated uniforms, appear ed in spite of the sinister setting like opera bouffe chorusmen.
 Charlton is an American with Italian lawyers, in an Italian court being tried by Italian methods. How ever, in the two years since he was taken back to Italy, he has learned the Italian language sufficiently we'll to be able to follow the progress of his trial.
 The jury which will hear the pleas is an unusual one for Italy. 1t is made up almost entirely of profes- sional men, and the reports of the alienists who have been watching the prisoner will not fall upon ignorant ears. There have been three reports by alienists-all of type familiar in America, which will be introduced at the trial. The first, for the defense, declared him insane at the time the crime was committed; the second for the crown, declared him sane, and the third, provided by the government, left loophOles both ways.
 Coming between the court and the prisoner were the visions of the penalty which may be visited upon him. The sentence for deliberate murder is life imprisonment. The first ten years of life term are spent in solitary confinement in dark cell with only bread and water for food a sentence which practically means death from insanity in few years. The sentence for murder not deliber ate is twenty years.
 The many extenuating circum- stances in the case, together with the youth of the prisoner, and the fact that crimes of passion" are not re- garded with great seriousness in Italy, have led Charlton's counsel to believe that it will be quite possible to free him.
 Charlton, then not twenty and a clerk in a New York banking house, married Mary Scott Castle, May 12, 1910. She was twice his age, had been well known in San Francisco and New York, and had short expert ence on the stage. She was of an intensely passionate and jealous nature, and when Charlton met her she was being held on bail for the shooting of William B. Craig, brok- CT, in the elevator of the Waldorf Astoria. She fascinated Charlton, and the attention of the young man pleased her.
 They sailed for Genoa four days after their marriage, and immediately they began series of violent quar- rels. They went through Italy and to the shores of Como, where their quarrels were so strenuous that they were asked to leave the hotel. Then they rentd the Villa Legnazzi at Moltrasio, where the crime was com mitted.
 It is said that the experience drove Charlton into periods of insanity dur ing one of which he killed her. The details may cause part of the trial to be conducted behind locked doors. The final quarrel came late at night on June T, and at it's height Charlton blind with rage, picked up mallet and beat her to death. He put the body in a trunk and sank it in the lake. Then he fled. The trunk was found two days later and search was made for Charlton'S body, for it was believed that he too, was the victim of murder. He was arrested aS he walked down the gangplank of thu Princess Irene in New York harbor. He had sailed from Genoa. He con fessed the crime, but he and his father Judge Paul Charlton, fOugHt extradition, and it was not until August 1913, that the United States Supreme court decided that he must return to Italy to stand trial. There he was lodged in an asylum for ob- servance. italian legal processes are slow, but the trial waS finally set for August, 1914. The coming of the