The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-07-13
|ORPET TRIAL is
NOW BATTLE OF
SILVER TONGUES
Defense Lawyers Labor to In
fluence Minds of Jurors.
Potter Destroys Dark Picture
Painted by Ralph Dady.
W|LKERSON COMES NEXT
Famous Standard Oil PrOsecu-
tor in New Role Today.
Trial Will End With Eloquent
OratOry of JOslyn.
Famous Standard Oil PrOsecu'
tor in New Role Today.

| irving to beat out flames with tneir
| bare hands, the attorneys represent
/ ing Will Orpet in his trial for the
murder of Marion Lambert, now rush.
! ing swiftly toward it's close, today
strove to beat back the leaping fires
| of suspicion in the minds of the jury.
| At the conclusion of States Attor-
| ney Ralph j. Dadys ferocious demand
| for the boys conviction on the charge
| that he murdered Marion Lambert
| last February in Helms Woods, the
mind of every juror of the IL was
aflame with the belief that the boy
| is guilty of that shocking and scarce
| ly believable crime. Point by point
Dady had ground his theory home I'M
til it doomed as large and important
as fact itself. For a moment at least,
Orpet stood convicted as the girls
| murderer-not a murderer of impulse.
| but a cold blooded calculating fiend
who laid his plans as warily as a
spider builds its web for the unsus-
| pecting fly.
| And then Attorney Ralph H. Potter
smoothly and adroitly manipulated
| the same circumstances until the jur-
ors gradually began to think that
| they had been led into a fit of tenn
! porary madness and that the boy
who had a while age seemed to them
| an arch-fiend was only a poor, scared,
| bewildered boy who had stumbled in
to a tragic difficulty and was some
way trying to find his way out again.
Under Different Light.
| All through the suffocating after
noon Potter reasoned and PLEADED
| He begged the jurors to start OUT
believing the boy inocent once more
| And when they had granted him this
| request he led them along the tortu-
| GUS way once more showing them
| that the points they had regarded as
| SO sinister and accusing were only
trivial little things after all.
| He broke the rope that bound the
bow SO securely-broke it a strand at
a time The circumstance which a
moment ago had been so deadly and
so utterly damning now seemed to be
perfectly natural action after all.
| Potter came back again today. He
came back to loosen the remaining
| strands-to show these men who are
sworn to Judge the boy that a fact
is double-faced cheat after all-that 1t
may tell one story or another, one
story as black as Erebus and the other
as white and shining as silver. One
thought of the ancient story of the
shield which was black on one side
and white on the other and the two
| knights who fought over it all through
| the day, to find out just as the sun
was descending. that they had both
been right all the time-but that they
had neglected the important duty of
| looking at the other side of the shield.
Potter was showing them the fair
side of the shield. Dady had shown
them the dark side. And when Potter
| Is through these jurors will be at sea
again. They must decide the difficult
problem in their own minds and not
according to the bidding of the con-
tentious men of law.
Potter Fights Savagely.
| Potter came back today to fight
more Savagely even than he fought
| Wednesday as he warmed to the close.
He had pilloried Attorney Joslyn as a
'.shyster who ought to be diSbarred"
for alluding to a bottle of poison in
! a addison drug store when no witness
was called to swear there was any
bottle there. He had dealt smashing
| blow at the testimony of DIR. Ralph
w. Webster, the states expert, who
Swore that it was cyanide of potassium
that was found in the Orpet ash heap
when it was, in reality, sodium cya-
hide. Webster also swore that it could
not have been cyanide in powder form
that killed the girl, but a liquid thus
bolstering up the prosecutions impor-
tant contention that the poison was
and that Orpet carried it away when
his work was done.
Potter expected to continue this
| line of reasoning. He expected to
spend large portion in the morning
proving that Merton Lambert must
have killed herself-that Orpet did not
kill her and could not have killed her
IL all the facts that have been pre-
sented in the evidence are fairly read
He expected 10 hold the floor until
noon. when he would relinquish it to
his colleague, james H. Wilkerson
former United States district attorney
the man who won a S29,000,OGO suit
against the Standard Oil.
1t was to be a new role for the for
mer government prosecutor-the role
of criminal attorney pleading for the
life of client. All eyes and ears to-
| day were waiting for the appearance
of this quiet. ironical man who has
been such potent influence behind
| the defense but whose voice has been
heard seldom
WilIxerson's Plea Long One.
Wilkerson was expected to consume
a whole day in his closing plea for
! Orpet's freedom. And then it was
to be Joslyn to the end-David E. Jos
lyn, whose fame SIS an orator is known
all through northern Illinois. All
through the argument he has sat. a
still, somber figure, within a few feet
| of the jury. watching them with keen.
estimating eyes. He knows when they
4 nave been touched and thrilled. He
has studied them so well that he
knows every nerve center. every SEN
sitive point And when the time comes
he will strike and strike again with
furious force-but always at the chinls
in the armor, the sore point-the place
| where it will do the most good-the
most harm for the boy on trial