A Notable Criminal Trial,

— the more actual operator — to turn State's evidence. Indictment was drawn for feloni ous conspiracy in forgery against the three, and to purge the record so he could be made a witness, Findlay pleaded guilty to misdemeanor with promise of immunity as witness. Richard Busteed, an eminent criminal advocate of the period — who, during the reconstruction period after the Civil War closed, became a Federal district judge in Alabama — was employed to defend. The district attorney had only been in office three months, and readily assented to the Chemical Bank employing as senior counsel one of his own predecessors, James R. Whiting, who had served with eminent success years before. The press having widely exploited the police details, great difficulty was experienced in finding a jury of readers unbiased by the accounts. The preparation of the facts had been entrusted to Assistant District-Attorney John Sedgwick, an admirable systematizer and brief-maker, who is now a venerable and popular justice of the New York Supreme Court. The testimony as to the meetings of the conspirators and their separate yet concerted actions, and the false personations and for geries and possession of the feloniously obtained money was admirably marshaled, and when the prosecution closed its testi mony and rested, curiosity was excited as to what possible defense could be of fered. But when Counselor Busteed, who was always fond of desperate cases, opened, it was seen that, inasmuch as many of the con necting links in the case for the people wholly depended upon Findlay's confessions, the defense, which had not called witnesses and had exhaustively cross-examined the confederate as to his moral antecedents, proving him to have been an undiscovered criminal, was bent upon asking the jurors to utterly reject the uncorroborated story of an informing confederate without which the

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reasonable doubt was engendered. Counsel or Busteed was impolitic enough to inveigh against the employment of private counsel (referring to Whiting), and when he arose to make the closing speech, that gentleman, whose popular soubriquet was " little Bitters" (he was short in stature and a master of sarcasm and invective), began thus: "Gen tlemen of the Jury, my adversary was bap tized Busteed, but I call upon you by your verdict to alter his name into Busted." The latter's speech had been quite pathetic in its close when he had expatiated on the danger of allowing personal liberty to be sacrificed by the lies of an informer, pur chasing immunity thereby; but the laugh on the advocate by the prosecutor's opening sentence, snuffed out the pathetic light that had so brilliantly burned. The judge charged mainly on the relations of testimony -of the nature popularly de scribed as " State's evidence," and said that the belief in such by a juror was only re strained by caution in weighing it. His charge, like all the Recorder's charges (and although frequent appeals were taken from his rulings, never during his judicial career were errors found by the appellate court), was thoroughly impartial, butlogicaland bold in tone, and it undoubtedly brought about the almost instantaneous verdict of guilty. During the trial the entire doctrine of criminal conspiracy became discussed, and there certainly was a flaw as to evidence of its formation, which depended alone — un corroborated therein — on the tainted testi mony of the informer. The testimony of the chambermaids and of the innocent victims as certainly proved concert of action. While under custody eastward, Kissane had jumped from the moving train, and on objec tion to the fact becoming proof, the doctrine of flight as an element of guilty conscious ness became also thoroughly discussed; also that regarding the silence by an accused of explanatory or denial testimony when pressed by incriminating facts — a