Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/88

 The Supreme Court of Georgia.

7i

his gavel. And when counsel for the State was making the concluding argument, ' from the crowd in the rear of the court room came, in an excited and angry tone, the cry, " Hang him! Hang him! Hang him! " and some of the crowd arose to their feet.' The Court rapped with his gavel and or dered the persons removed, but states that he does "With him there went not know whether his order was carried into effect A self-correcting and ascetic bent by the sheriff or not. Shortly after, another per Which from the obvious good kept him astray, And set him wandering on die longest way."

son sitting within the bar and near the Judge cried out. ' Hang him! ' The Court ordered him re By this introspec moved, and he was car tive and speculative ried down the back stairs. habit of thought, It is not known whether Judge Simmons is the jury knew that this not embarrassed. He person was carried out or would be the last man not. All the jurors make whom his acquaint affidavit that these things ances would think of had no influence upon as liable to any mis their minds; and from take of judgment. my own knowledge of the A fair specimen of character of these gentle men, I have no doubt that his style is afforded they believed this to be by his decision in the true. But can any man case of the State vs. say with certainty that Thomas Wool folk. such things have no influ This monster had in ence upon him? Can one night killed nine any of us know how far of his relatives who our minds are influenced stood between him and by applause or excite a coveted inheritance. ment of a crowd which The bloody butchery surrounds us? Can any included three gene- — _ 1 of us say, even in this rations of his kinspeocourt, that this or that JAMES JACKSON. ple, — from an aged piece of testimony, or this argument of counsel, has grandmother to an infant child. If ever any case of hideous not influenced our minds? Can any of us say that crime could by its atrocity justify a court in on the trial of one of the most heinous crimes ever upholding a verdict of guilty, in the face of committed in this State or any other, the applause error in the record, it was this. But a new of the crowd, the fierce cries of ' Hang him! Hang him! ' from members of the crowd, followed trial was granted on account of circum later on by a repetition of the same cry from the stances growing out of the very heinousness lips of one of the most highly respected and es of the prisoner's offence. teemed citizens of the community, would have no The extract referred to is as follows (8r influence upon their minds' Our minds are so Ga. 559, 560) : — constituted that it is impossible to say what im pression scenes of this kind would make upon us, "The facts are, in substance, that at the conclu sion of the opening argument for the State, the unless we had determined beforehand that the crowd in the court-room applauded. The Judge prisoner was guilty or innocent. The question here took no notice of this applause except to rap with is not what effect these things did have upon the merits discovered by ourselves. All the ser pents outside are not half so dangerous as the one that slips about in our own garden." Arthur Hugh Clough has referred to this mental type in the lines, —