Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land piratePitts, J. R. S. (James Robert Soda)
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Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land pirate
Pitts, J. R. S. (James Robert Soda)
Copeland, James, 1823-1857; Criminals -- Gulf States -- Biography
The jury once more retired. The court kept furnishing fresh charges in
opposition to the first given; the last of which was so pointedly as
to declare in positive terms that according to the law and evidence
it, the jury, was compelled to find a verdict for the prosecution! Six
long days and nights had this jury remained in confinement. Worn out by
it and with excessive loss of rest, together with no hope of immediate
relief, as the judge had declared his intention to keep it in strict
confinement for an indefinite period, unless a verdict could sooner be
returned; all these miseries endured, and in prospect to be endured,
forced the jury at last to a verdict against its better judgment by
the understanding or impression artfully made that it would be better
to get liberty by agreeing to a verdict with a small amount of fine
in the way of damages for G. Y. Overall, but had not the most distant
idea of any imprisonment resulting. But the judge better knew the law
which invested him with power to imprison for six months, but in this
instance he sentenced only for three months.
In addition to the torturing process resorted to for the purpose of
forcing a verdict from the jury in its last hours of confinement, other
shameful means were made use of by outsiders of a tampering nature—such
as the conveyance of notes and packages in bottles to that part of the
jury in favor of the prosecution—one end of the string tied to the
bottle, and the other end, in the form of a ball, thrown through the
window to be received by the parties intended. The nature of these
notes and packages could only be conjectured—the recipients themselves
holding the contents a perfect secret within their own little circles.
This information was conveyed to the defendant by eye-witnesses and
part of the jury.
SYMPATHY AND REGRET AS EXPRESSED BY SEVERAL JURORS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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