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EDWARD D. WORRELL. 125

where the office of the company is located, the prisoner might,
and probably did, suppose that he had a large amount of
money in his possession.

I might allude also to the fact of his assuming different
names, and his flight of a thousand miles from the scene of
the murder, and other circumstances developed in the case;
but the entire case furnishes s0 many evidences of express
malice that I am not doing your intelligence justice in sup-
posing that you can entertain the slightest doubt upon this
point. The idea that 2 man would shoot another in the back
of the head, and then rob his person, and take and carry
away his horse, watch, saddle, bridle and saddlecbags, with-
out any evil intent, is too absurd to merit further notice. I
therefore hasten to the fourth and last proposition of the
counsel, involving the issue of insanity.

This is the battle ground of the cause, the one upon which
the gentleman has planted his heaviest battery; not the
ground of his own selection, but one to which he has been
driven by force of circumstances, and as it is his last stand,
it was to be expected that he would here display his prowess.
Unfortunately for the administration of public justice, this
defense has, of late years, become too common, though it is
only resorted to when every other avenue of escape is aban-
doned. It ig the last resort, the straw at which the drowning
man catches in his final struggle for life. Do not misun-
derstand me as intending to disparage this defense when a
proper ease is presented for its application; for God forbid
that I should be instrumental in sending any man into eter-
nity who is not strictly accountable for his acts; but I do
say, and say boldly, that in this case there is no evidence
upon which this defense can be predicated; that it is a
trumped-up affair, taken up as a dernier resort, and planned
and conceived for no other purpose than to evade the pen-
alty of the law.

The first proposition of Major Wright is, “That the con-
duet of the prisoner from the time of his desertion at Fort
Leavenworth, up to the day that he was lodged in the St.
Lonia jail, cannot be accounted for upon any other prin-

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