Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/378

 €t)e #reen BagPublished Monthly, at $4.00 per Annum.

Single Numbers, 50 Cents.

Communications in regard to the contents bf the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, i$}i Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of inter est to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia, anec dotes, ete. THE GREEN BAG. AN Ithaca, N.Y., correspondent sends us the following interesting account of the chlorine poisoning case at Cornell : — Editor of the " Green Bag.'" Dear Sir. — One of the most famous terms of the Supreme Court of the State of New York closed May 17 at Ithaca, having failed to discover the per petrators of the chlorine gas outrage, by which a colored woman lost her life. On the evening of Febt 20, 1894, the Freshmen of Cornell University were holding a banquet at Ithaca. The Sophomores had rushed them that same evening, previous to the banquet, but they had finally reached the hall and settled down to the discussion of the bill of fare. Those outside the hall saw noth ing unusual to attract their attention until about eleven o'clock, when a colored woman, a cook, was led out, unconscious, supported by two men. She was soon followed by several students in the same condition. The woman was taken to a physician's office, where in a few minutes she died. The students were revived with some difficulty at the neighboring drug stores. An investigation was immediately made by the police, and the cause of the trouble ascertained. Some parties, presumably Sophomores, had ob tained access to an unused room just beneath the banquet room, and here they had prepared an apparatus consisting of a jug with two rubber tubes leading up through holes in the ceiling to the room above. In the jug had been placed salt and sulphuric acid, which together formed chlorine gas, and this it was which had so overcome the banqueters. The first clue found was the absence of Carl L. Dingens, a Sophomore from Buffalo, from his board ing house the next morning. Then the address, No. 6 Cook Street, where Dingens boarded, was found in lead-pencil on the jug. Dingens' whereabouts could not be ascertained after diligent inquiry at his home in Buffalo, but three

week's later, when the spring term of the University opened, he appeared and announced that he had been under the care of his old family physician at Syracuse for treatment for weak eyes, and had been forbidden by him to read the newspapers, so that the first he knew of the tragedy was when he arrived back in Ithaca. Meantime the coroner had promptly impanelled a jury, which singularly enough contained a number of Cornell graduates, and subpoenaed F. L. Taylor, another Sophomore, who roomed with Dingens, to tell what he knew about the affair. He, acting under the advice of counsel, claimed the privilege, allowed by the New York Code in trials before the courts, of not being compelled to testify to any matter which would tend to incriminate himself. The business men of Ithaca who were asked to testify as to whore the materials were obtained could not remember to whom they sold them, and their poor memory at this time probably saved them a boycott. The trustees of Gornell University placed $500 in the hands of the coroner to employ private detectives on the case. It was now nearly the time when the Grand Jury of the County would convene, in cennection with the Supreme Court and Oyer and Terminer, Judge Gerritt A. Forbes presiding, so the Coroner's Jury, having been unable to accomplish anything definite, turned the whole matter over to the Grand Jury. The presiding Justice Gerritt Forbes charged the Grand Jury, giving special attention to the chlorine case. The " New York World "and some other papers throughout the country, took exception to the charge, claiming that it was too lenient with the offenders, the "World" heading an editorial on the subject •• Conniving at Crime." Professor Charles A. Collin of the Cornell Law School, for eight years special counsel of the Gov ernor, discussed the question before his law class, claiming that the crime was murder because, while not premeditated, yet it was committed while the perpetrators were engaged in an act imminently dangerous to others, and evincing a depraved mind, regardless of human life, although without a premed itated design to effect the death of any individual. These criticisms drew from Judge Forbes a spirited reply, in which he claimed that he had not intended to smooth over the matter, and he thereupon charged