_The District Attorney._ "Notwithstanding the disclaimer of the gentleman to impute any wrong motive to us in submitting the motion now before your honor, I think, inasmuch as public reference has been made to it here, it is due to my position before the country to say a word. I will here say, then, that there is no one who would more earnestly and sincerely deprecate any appeal to religious prejudices than myself. Politicians may speak, think, and act as they please, but for my part I would drive from the halls of justice the demon of party spirit and religious fanaticism. I trust in God the day will never come when a judge, or a jury, will be influenced in the discharge of the most solemn duty that can possibly be devolved upon human beings by political or religious considerations." At the assembling of the court on the morning of the 13th, Judge Fisher delivered an exhaustive opinion on the motion before him. As it is somewhat lengthy I shall only give its concluding paragraph. "Believing, therefore, that the substantial requirements of the act of Congress in this case providing for the selection of a fair and impartial jury, have not been complied with, but entirely set at naught, and that there has been grave default on the part of the officers whom that act has substituted in the place of the marshal, for the purpose of having them exercise a united judgment in the selection of all the persons whose names are to go in the jury box, I am constrained to allow the motion of challenge in this case. I do not consider the fact that the present panel were improperly drawn by the clerk of Georgetown, who had no right to put his hand into the box, because the objection which I have allowed lies even deeper than that. It is, therefore, ordered by the Court that the present panel be set aside, and that the Marshal of the District of Columbia do now proceed to summon a jury of talesmen." Judge Fisher subsequently said: "My order is that the Marshal summon twenty-six talesmen." The process of securing a jury from talesmen occupied the next four days, and about two hundred talesmen were summoned before a panel could be secured. Many of those summoned by the marshal were excused on showing sufficient grounds; a very large number were found disqualified on their _voire dire_; and perhaps all of the challenges, or nearly so, to which the parties were entitled, were exhausted, and it was not until the evening session of the 16th of June, that the jury was impaneled to try the case. When a panel of twenty-six jurors had been secured, counsel for the prisoner, through Mr. Merrick, said: "If your honor please, we are now ready to proceed to empanel the jury. Before doing so, however, we think it our duty, in behalf of the prisoner, to file our challenge to the present array. Your honor has virtually decided the question, and we do not desire to take up any time in its argument. We simply wish that it may be filed so that it can be passed upon."