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EDWARD D. WORRELL. 8&3

duty of searching diligently, anxiously, honestly. If you
reason badly, it is fatal. If you do not imagine well, it is
fatal; and yet, cireumstantial evidence is lauded as the guide
of safety in the most awful of human inquiries!

Jurors, pour out the mass of victims sent to the scaffold
by circumstantial evidence. I have neither time nor strength
and I may add patience to wade through the melancholy rec-
ords. Let me present to you the case of a poor girl in Eng-
land, slaughtered, judicially slaughtered, though innocent;
aslanghtered, because a jury could not or would not search
for another hypothesis! I read from Starkie:

“A lamentable case oceurred some years ago, which strongly illus
trates the necessity of exerting the utmost vigilance in negativing
satisfactorily every other possible hypothesis in a case of purely
circumstantial evidence. A servant girl was charged with the mur-
der of her mistress. The cireumstantial evidence was very strong;
no persons were in the house but the murdered mistress and the eer-
vant; the doors and windows were closed and secured as usual (in-
side). Upon this and some other eircumstances the prisoner was
convicted principally upon the presumption (i. e, hypothesis)
from the state of the doors and windows, that no one could have
had ageess to the house but herself, and the was accordingly exe:
cuted.”

1 stop the narrative here. I do not yet wish you to hear
what follows. I want you to sit as a jury on the case of the
girl. I wish to show you what the fourth rule means. I de-
sire to prove to you the fatal fascination of circumstantial
evidence and its insidious treachery. These are the facts.
‘What will you do with them? The house had but two ten-
ants, one the dead mistress, the other the living gir. The
doors and windows are closed, secured on the inside. Who
could be the murderer but the girlf It is not a case of suicide.
It is a case of assassination; and there is but one assassin!
Beside other circumstances point to the girl and proclaim her
guilt, Can such circumstances lie? Is not investigation
ended? Why seek for any other hypothesis than her guilt?
Can any supposition explain the circumstances, but the sup-
position of her guilt? Do you see any room for doubt? Can
you imagine no state of facts which may save her life? Think,

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