THE FISK MURDER CASE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 201, 3 January 1873, Page 5

THE FISK MURDER CASE.

j Referring to the Fisk trial at New York the * Spectator' says : J The District Attornej% who conducted j the prosecution, pointed out that it did j not master in the least whether Fisk was a good or a bad man, and that the law was that no one should b? allowed to take* into his own hand the power to execute judgment on his fellow-man. T:ie Judge refused to allow questions to be put to j the witnesses with the view of proving the dissolute and desperate character of the murdered man ; but the counsel for j the defence took every opportunity ofi bringing this side of the subject before! the jury, and of suggesting than, as Stokes j was helpless in the courts of law where he was being pursued by Fisk, and as the latter had at c nimand other violent and illegal means of injuring him which he.! was quite capable of employing, S.okes had a right to protect himself in the best wajr he could, and that in any case the killing of such a scoundrel as Fisk wasrather a gain than a loss to society. And there can be no doubt that this was the question on which the jury found (hemselves at the last unable to make up their minds. *' There was," says one of tle j Reporters, " an intense silence in the Courtroom when John M Ke >n (Stokes's leading c-.ainse!) threw hack his coat, •ooked round on Judges, jury, and spec i tators," and "arraigned the d >c as<?d man ! before the bar of public opinion." In glowing language, we are told, he depicted Fisk's disregard of public morality, his defiance of all laws, both human and divine, and, what in New York is perhaps accounted still worse, his contempt for public opinion. He denounced Fisk as the greatest curse America had ever known, likening him to Cagliostro and Casanova, names apparently chosen at random to impress the jury, who found themselves trying F,sk, who was dead, and not represented by counsel, instead of the prisoner at the bar. may be true that Fisk, as Mr. M'Keon said in his " glowing " language had debauched the sentimentof the people, polluted the fountains of justice, and made the graud old words •' American honour and fair play " bywords of contempt a; d scorn in all ciri!ize<! c< untri< s~ ; but we j are afraid I hat the resu't of tlrs trial, ai>d | the recognition of the right of fr':e shoot- j ing from personal motives and for private I ends, will hardly serve to reinstate New ! Vork in the good opinion of the world, j The counsel quoted some of Fisk's say. ings, but without /offering any proof of them, or attempting to show that Fisk ever carried higf precepts into practice, Jt was said tWt when he found a troublesome person in his way he" Would j remark, " jLet no man interfere with us, j for if he d/Jes our touch is cold and clammy; I and on /another occasion he observed; *' We jhave private graveyards open j for ourfenemies." Fisk and Stokes were rivals/j n Jove, and they were also mixed up in business transactions, and it w fas, alleged that Fisk used his power ovei* Stokes in the latter to revenge himsp'ff for having been supplanted in the an °*|ctions of " Josie," the vulgar Helen of a 'l»w intrigue. Mr. M'Keon stated that Smokes ha.d suffered very much from luß ari pest, an! imprisonment; he was a ch anged man ; and it would be for the jui fy to say how far his mind had been ! distturbed by the treatment he had received at fthe hands of Fisk. When he had con* chivied, the jury were possibly under the : impression that the question was whether

some means could not be devised of punishing*., the murdered man for his atrocious conduct to the murderer, and whether out of the fortune of the deceased or out; of the public purse some handtsoiae "compensation shruld not be to the hero in the dock.