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EDWAED D. WORRELL. 89

you going to hang a man on your best solution? That is
precisely what was done by the jury who murdered the inno-
cent girl; by Jacob; by every jury and every man that ever
erred, fatally erred, on circumstantial evidence. It is this
best, this plausible hypothesis that ever seduces and leads
astray. I deny your power! The law is against it, The law
will not act on the best, but the only hypothesis, if there be
“worst”? “better,’? ‘‘best,’? the law will not choose between
them. If there be room for choiee, there is no room for con-
vietion. That is the fourth rale. But I do not stop at this
one hypothesia which you cannot satisfactorily exclude—ex-
elnde to a moral certainty. I give you another.

Tt is entirely possible, from all the evidence in this cause,
that one of the two shot Gordon intentionally and that the
other knew nothing of the fact till he heard the report of the
pistol. There is a hypothesis which no human reason can
“exelude to a moral certainty.’? Do you ask me, what con-
seqnenee this hypothesis brings? I answer: if you know
who shot, you may act on that knowledge and hold the shooter
responsible for his act. If you know who it was that did not
shoot, and he afterwards committed lareeny, by appropriating
felonionsly the property of the deceased, the law will pun-
ish him for larceny. If he afterwards aided and assisted the
man who shot to escape, he is guilty as an accessory after
the fact. But if you only know that it was one of two who
shot, there can be no conviction of either for murder; for, as
Taaid, the chances are equal that you would select the wrong
man; and therefore the law will not permit you to select at
all May not 8 murder thus go unpunished? Yes! Cer-
tainly, that is the result, and that ought to be the result, un-
less you are prepared to commit the more awful crime of
jedicisl murder! That a man should lose his life by vio-
lenee is a great calamity. Individual murder springing from
unlicensed passions, horrible as it is, ean never appall the
mind as does the deeper tragedy of murder done in court,
Tn the latter case the entire framework of society is shaken,
The universal sense of insecurity arising from the proof that
innovenes is no shield, and government no protection! It is

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