Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/508

 Recorder John W. Goff. for its approach, and it proved to be a launch from a New Bedford whaling ship, and her captain was in the stern. Finding O'Reilly's plight he sympathizingly aided in conveying him in the launch back to the ship and thence in due time to America. The escape was chronicled in marine news and Boyle O'Reilly's advent expected. The ship containing him first made the port of New York and Goff was among the first to welcome him. The incident led to the formation of an association of Fenians bent upon aiding in the pardon or escape of O'Reilly's convict comrades, and Goff became secretary and counsel of the body. It endeavored to obtain pardons but Prime Minister Beaconsfield proved inex orable. Then the Association resolved upon aiding an escape. Money was subscribed, a whaling brig purchased, refitted, provisioned and manned, and sent to the penal settle ment, and all done under perfect secrecy. Irish freemasonry effected underground com munication with the Fenian convicts and they duly escaped from shore to the brig, which, although it was pursued by a British cutter, proved to be the fleeter. In the en terprise lawyer Goff was conspicuously em ployed, and his connection with the affair gave him personal and political prestige. There came out a good joke in the affair. The chief of police at the penal settlement sup posing the brig to have been a whaler, cabled the head of the New Bedford police full particulars of the escape and asked de tention and arrests. But in the complica tions of fate the recipient of the dispatch happened to be the very captain who had procured O'Reilly's escape and who had since left the sea to become an official land lubber. In 1886 Mr. Goffs standing at the crim inal bar and his new political prestige among his countrymen procured from the district attorney of New York City the offer of an assistantship at a salary of $7,500. In that post he soon rose to prominence. His first

467

cause celebre came in a prosecution of a plaintiff in a divorce suit, — no other than New York's high sheriff, — his son, a referee and a court clerk, for a conspiracy to pro cure a fraudulent decree. The district at torney having been a personal and political pal of the accused sheriff, named Flack, the prosecution was intrusted to Assistant Goff, who readily procured a conviction of Flack, who was sentenced to the peniten tiary but released on a stay and bail pend ing appeal; after which the highest court reversed the conviction on the ground that the presiding judge, in charging the jury, had usurped their functions by saying as he held the incriminatory documents in his hand, " these fraudulent papers have," etc., etc. The judge undoubtedly intended 'to say " these ' alleged' fraudulent papers," but cúrrente lingua he omitted that potent par ticiple. The reported case shows how pre cisely stenography fixed the error, and how strictly jealous the appellate court was of a usurpation by a judge of the jurisdiction of jurors over questions of fact, although that the papers were fraudulent had been con ceded. The conviction was, however, neces sary in order to perfectly absolve the judge, who, relying on the apparent regularity and good faith of the papers before him (fraud ulent in fact although they really were), had granted a decree of divorce that he subsequently vacated. The verdict not only absolved the judge (now Justice Bookstaver of the Supreme Court) but a committee of the legislature sealed that absolution by refusing articles of impeachment presented by his political enemies. Assistant District Attorney Goff subse quently tried several capital cases, and among them convicted the last murderer who suffered death by hanging under the execution laws of New York, and also the first convict to suffer the new electrocution that superseded the scaffold. The latter incident became notable in a newspaper way, because on the day of the electrocu