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738 &. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

most unclouded state of the understanding, the most un-
wearied attention to facts, and the strictest self-examination,
lest, through rashness, inadvertency, or prejudice, we pass
sentence upon the innocent, and commit a judicial murder.
If these considerations are of importance in relation to a sol-
itary individual, how much greater must be their importance
in the present case. You are not now called upon to decide
the fate of one, but of twelve persons. The lives of twelve
men are in your hands. By your verdict will be determined
whether the individuals who now sit before you, in the full-
ness of life and strength, continue to exist, or whether they
shall taste the bitterness of death—the ignominious death of
the gallows. This court now presents the extraordinary spec-
tacle of a number of prisoners tallying precisely with that of
the jurors, They are opposed to you, as it were, man for
man, and your verdict will decide individually and collect-
ively their fate.

Under these circumstances, gentlemen, it becomes you to
approach this trial with something like a religious conscious-
ness of the imperfections of our nature, and our liability to
error; it becomes you also to lay aside every thing that may
have a tendency to darken your understandings, or obscure
the day light of truth, The men before you have a host of
prejudices to encounter. Notwithstanding the just and be
nevolent maxim of the law, ‘‘that every man shall be held
innocent till proven to be guilty,’’ we are too apt to believe
an individual criminal merely because he is accused. No
sooner do we see him here than we discern the mark of Cain
upon his forehead. Men are frequently tried under circum-
stances only slightly presumptive of their guilt, but the sim-
ple fact of their being brought up for trial, too often pleads
more strongly against them, than the most eloquent prosecat-
ing officer, And this feeling operates againat a prisoner, ex-
actly in accordance with the magnitude of the crime of which
he is accused. In cases of robbery, or larceny, the evil is not
great; but let him be charged with murder, and the case is
widely different. The imagination then plays us tricks; gives

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