Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/226

 The Surratt Cause Celebre. der the special statute, had suspended the operations of the writ; and of course the procedure fell. It was asked in the legal profession at the time why counsel did not follow procedures that in the Milligan case were formulated; but the answer came that those went through Federal District Courts in a State, and that no such procedure could emanate in the District of Columbia. Taken to the scaffold, supported by guards, and cheered by her confessor, she, in company with three others of her " co conspirators," was placed to her degradation on the drop beside Payne, the would-be and self-confessed assassin of Secretary Seward; while Herold and Atzerodt were placed to gether upon an adjoining drop. Almost with her last breath, moaning even under the death-cap, she protested her innocence. So the end came, with a prison burial; for even her corpse was denied to her daugh ter. The Surratt cause celebre is throughout a curiosity in legal history. Lawyers will have to go back centuries into State trials to find such breaches of the rules of evidence as mark it. Soldiers who had been pris oners at Libby and Andersonville were al lowed to testify to Confederate cruelties; hearsay testimony established a burying by

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the Confederate government of torpedoes at Richmond for use if the Union troops en tered it; one witness was allowed to testify that an alleged Confederate agent paid him to try and introduce fever-affected garments into Northern cities; a confession of a Con federate spy (already hanged) that he was hired by the Richmond government to burn New York City; a clipping from an Alabama newspaper that showed a private offer to kill President Lincoln and Vice-President John son if a certain sum was raised; a cipher letter found floating in North Carolina waters; letters found in the archives of the Davis government when Richmond was cap tured suggesting plots for retribution upon the North; were all allowed as evidence. And when are considered the ironing of the prisoners in an American court-room; the too late decision that Mrs. Surratt's court never had acquired jurisdiction over her; the substantial acquittal of her son on the same old evidence; and the mystery of the commutation certificate; may it not be well observed that the Surratt cause celebre takes as interesting a position in court annals and among state trials a sany other known criminal investigation; and markedly so to lawyers who care to trace the pitfalls that commonly surround court-martial or civil trials during scenes of popular excitement.

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