Life and bloody career of the executed criminal, James Copeland, the great Southern land piratePitts, J. R. S. (James Robert Soda)
History
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
First, let the report from the inquisition jury be read, which will be
found on page 113 of this work. Again, it is well known by those who
visited Copeland in person, that there was a keenness and shrewdness
about him which distinguished him from ordinary men; and all the
promptings given to feign insanity did not amount to anything but
deserving failure. And as to the gratuitous charge of forging names,
the defendant did not know anything about them previous to being
given by Copeland. He did not know that such names were in existence
before, and of course could not forge in the absence of all knowledge
appertaining; but the conduct of the prosecution, with hundreds of
living witnesses, go, as quoted from the letter just referred to, “to
nail to the cross forever the truth of Copeland’s confessions.”
So much for the trial in Mobile in the first case, and now for the
necessary comments to further enable the reader to comprehend the whole.
There were two other cases on the same docket of precisely a similar
nature to the first against the defendant. For two or three years
afterward he was in regular attendance, and always ready for trial; but
the prosecution would not allow either case to come on until known that
his presence was required in the army during the war; and then it had
the cases called up, and the bonds declared forfeited. The two cases
were ordered dismissed, and, some several years afterward, the bondsmen
were finally released by the “Commissioners of Revenue” without injury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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