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

816 XY. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Then Chase grew angry and, as he would have said, took
the lawyers in hand. When Mr. Hay argued that Giles’ evi-
dence would help to determine whether Callender’s pamph-
let consisted of libelous statements or merely questions of
opinion, which things would have to be considered by the
jury in assessing the fine; ‘‘That is a wild notion; it is not
the law,’’ thundered the Judge, and ordered the jury to be
empannelled and the trial to proceed. Mr. Nicholas having
challenged the entire panel of jurora, he was flouted and
routed with a finality that not only overruled his objec-
tions, but cast serious aspersions on his legal attainments.
Mr. Hay then proposed to examine the jurors individually
as to any prejudices they might entertain against the ac-
cused, No questions could be asked the jurors, answered
Chase, save such as were first reduced to writing and sub-
mitted for the approval of the court, and when the attor-
neys finally submitted written questions for the jurors,
their interrogatories were declared improper and rejected
forthwith. According to the court, it did not make any
difference if a talesman had read and formed an unfavor-
able opinion of ‘‘The Prospect Before Us;”’ he was still eli-
gible for the jury provided he had not formed an opinion
econeerning the charge on which the prisoner was indicted,
and as none of the candidates had read the indictment, they
were all qualified to serve on the case, The Virginian law-
yers now abandoned all hope of securing an impartial jury,
for when one of the talesmen-named Basset volunteered
the information that he had read Callender’s tract and had
formed a positive opinion that it came under the Sedition
Law, they failed to record any objection to his retention.

The authorship was easily established by the testimony
of the printers who had put the manuscript into type and
the booksellers who had sold it as a pamphlet, and when
Mr. Hay protested that those men could not be compelled
to answer the questions put to them, they being accom-
plices equally guilty under the law, and privileged from
testifying against themselves, the court not only overruled