552 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

520 ¥, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

jection was immediately overruled. A part of the jury in-
sisted that they had a right to deliberate alone, whereupon
the Solicitor General took down their names and threatened
that he ‘‘would eause them to be trounced,” and the jury
broke up in confusion without acting. The Solicitor Gen-
eral then complained to the court, that four of the jury in-
sisted that he should not be present at their deliberations,
and the court ordered them to be forthwith discharged. Still
the jury hesitated to find a bill of indictment, and, when they
did return one into court, it was immediately objected that
the competent number had not voted for it, and it appeared
by the statement of eight of the nineteen jurors, that they
had not voted in favor of it. But the court decided that the
indictment had been regularly returned; it waa thus a mat-
ter of record, and no averment against it could be received.

The indictment set forth that the prisoner ‘‘falsely, mali-
ciously, advisedly, elandestinely, rebelliously and traitorous-
ly,”’ used divers indirect practices and endeavors to procure
mutiny and desertion among the soldiers and to induce them
to sign false and scandalous libels against the government;
that his majesty’s subjects in the province were oppressed;
that the government was rendered cheap and vile in the eyes
of the people and that the present General Assembly of the
province was not @ lawful assembly.

‘The prisoner and his counsel vainly argued that there was
no treason in exercising the right of petition for the redresa
of grievances. The Chief Justice overruled every point made
in the defense and practically forced a verdict of guilty from
an unwilling jary. He sentenced him to be hanged, drawn
and quartered according to the form of the English penalty
for treason at that day.

But the sentence was never carried out, for, when the new
Governor of the Colonies arrived, Colonel Bayard was re-
leased, and the Chief Justice and his Solicitor General fled
to England.