Clinch Valley News

JUSTICE IN ALABAMA.
Why
Prisoner Was
Declared
"Not
Guilty."

A Jacksonville broker, while traveling in the Alabama mountains, was invited by a friend, a local judge, to attend the trial of a "cracker" for shooting a darky, and, the prisoner having no money to hire a lawyer, the judge appointed the broker to defend him, allowing that if the broker was not a lawyer, "he was an idiot because he wasn't one"—a judgment amply supported by his conduct of the case, says the San Francisco Argonaut. The broker cross-examined the witness briefly, sending in now and then a discomfiting trajectory. When he came to make a speech, he said: Gentlemen of the jury, I have taken great pains to show you that my client was a respectable citizen. Ten witnesses have asserted—on oath, mind you—that he stands high in his community. The defendant was six feet three inches tall and the jury smiled. He stood high in his community, and that is sufficient. Now, for the law. We find in the thirteenth verse of the sixteenth chapter of Chitty on Pleadings'—Chitty, gentlemen, was one of the bravest generals in the confederate army—this well-established principle of law. Here the broker adjusts his glasses, holds the book far off, elevates his chin and reads: "No respectable white man can be guilty of crime." That, gentlemen, is enough. I leave the case in your hands.

Each juror changed his quid, looked at his neighbor, nodded and, without leaving their seats, they rendered a loud and emphatic verdict of "Not guilty," and then joined in three cheers for the defendant and his lawyer.