His slayer pleaded insanity. The trial jury on first ballot stood six for conviction and six for acquittal on the ground of insanity. Finally, the verdict of the whole jury declared him insane. He was transferred to the Asylum at Anchorage where he remained but a short time. He escaped to Indiana where he remained because our requisition laws were then not sufficient to enforce his return to Kentucky. Immediately after the death of Justice Elliott an election was ordered for his successor and Judge Hargis again became a candidate before the Democratic convention. A number of able and distinguished jurists opposed him before that body, many of these much older and experienced than he. In spite of the powerful opposition brought to bear against him, Judge Hargis again succeeded in obtaining the nomination, another proof of his political influence as well as of his talents and abilities as a lawyer and politician. This last and most important success of Hargis aroused anew the malign hatred and envy of his numerous enemies in the camps of his own party. The old charges were renewed, remodeled, rehashed, renovated and added to, as the occasion demanded. The story of his wilful, felonious destruction and mutilation of court records was republished and more extensively circulated than ever. Newspapers, circulars, hand-bills and letters telling the story were scattered throughout the district, posted up at all public places, on fences and trees along the highways, thus increasing factional enmity to a dangerous intensity. Opposed to him in this race was Judge Holt, a Republican politician and lawyer of prominence, and of unassailable purity of character. The contest between these men was waged with spirit with the result that the mantle of Judge Elliott fell upon Judge Hargis. During the canvass Judge Hargis, through the _Courier Journal_ and other newspapers, had denounced the persons over whose signatures a number of the scandalous accusations and derogatory charges had been made, as liars, calumniators and villains. Thomas M. Green, editor of the Maysville _Eagle_, also correspondent of the Cincinnati _Commercial Gazette_, had been most persistent in industriously keeping the disparaging accusations against Hargis in the columns of the Republican press of the country. Editor Green was, in consequence, singled out by Hargis in his card to the _Courier Journal_ as the chief offender, assailing him in most bitter terms. Green applied to the law for redress and instituted suit for libel in the Jefferson Circuit Court at Louisville, asking for a large sum in damages.