The Madison Daily Leader

M'CREADY FREE.
The Prosecution's Delays Fatal to Justice
—Defense Avail Themselves of the
Technicalities of the Law and the
Prisoner Goes Free.
Sheriff Fox was up early this morning
and had all the fires in the court and
jury rooms in full blast for several hours
to make things comfortable for the large
crowd that would gather to hear the
evidence in the case of the state against
A. W. McCready for "shooting and attempting to kill, one C. F. Saxby." But
neither at 10 a. m. nor 11 did the court
and retinue show up. In company with
the sheriff, a Daily Leader reporter
started out to learn the cause of the delay only to find that the hearing was
over and the prisoner discharged. After
considerable searching, Justice Jones
was found ensconced beside a stove and
a dry goods box in the engine room
where the finale proceedings had been
held. He was all alone and quite communicative.
Referring to his docket we discovered
that after a slight amendment of former
proceedings the only entry of to-day's
proceedings was as follows:
"Defendant moves that this proceeding be dismissed because this court has
no jurisdiction to try this action, for the
following reasons; First, the order of
D. D. Holdridge, Esq., from whom this
cause came by change of venue, fails to
determine who is the next nearest justice; second, because this case was continued from the 5th of December for
more than two days without the defendant's consent; third, this case was continued from the 5th of December for
more than two days without the defendant's consent. Motion granted and
prisoner dismissed. Costs taxed against
plaintiff."
In justification of his action in granting the motion, the justice referred to
section 7,165 of the code, which reads as
follows:
"The examination must be completed
at one session unless the magistrate for
good cause adjourn it. The adjournment cannot be for more than two days
at each time, nor more than six days in
all, unless by consent or on motion of
the defendant."
The record shows that the adjournment on the 5th inst. was at the instance
of the prosecution and objected to by
the defendant; and again on the 8th the
adjournment was moved for five
days by the prosecution for want of a
material witness and objected to by the
defense. As the sequel shows, both
moves were advantageous to the defendant.