Murder Aboard by C. Michael Hiam

Author:C. Michael Hiam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2012-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Asa French, looking somewhat revived, stood before the jurors and forcefully began the opening argument for the defense. He criticized to the point of dismissal all the evidence the government had introduced against the man in the prisoner’s dock but saved his most scathing remarks for the government’s complete reliance on a single and, in his opinion, unreliable witness.

“We do not believe that conscientious, intelligent men, alive to the responsibility of the oaths which you have taken,” French thundered, “would send a fellow human being to the gallows upon the evidence of such a man as Brown. If that be possible, neither you nor I nor anybody in the community would be safe for a single moment. Let me refer, because it is extraordinary, to the language used by the learned district attorney in his opening in reference to this witness.”

French then read to the jurors something Hoar had told them on the first day of trial:

I have been all through this case, and there is no question that in some people’s minds there is a lurking suspicion that this man [Brown] at the wheel here had a hand in this murder. I claim first that he did not. I claim second that, if he did, he was simply part and parcel of the man [Bram] who sits in the dock over there and that he could not have committed a murder unless that man with him was also an accomplice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.