During the Kokomo days when he was prominent as a criminal lawyer he was at different times pitted against many of the giants of the bar. To attempt an enumeration of even the more prominent cases would be irksome. Strangely enough some of his greatest speeches in criminal cases were for the prosecution. He was of such a kindly disposition, so easily touched by suffering, and his sympathies were so readily reached that among the leading criminal lawyers of those days he seemed the least adapted to the role of prosecutor, and yet he probably figured more frequently as prosecutor than any of the others. The older people of Tipton county still remember his powerful argument and remarkably forceful peroration in closing for the prosecution in the murder case of State vs. Doles in Tipton in 1882. But a more interesting case is that of State vs. Hawkins, in which he appeared as special prosecutor at Kokomo in what was probably his last great criminal case in his native county, in 1885. Young Hawkins had been attentive to a young woman who had been taken out for a drive into the country by one of his friends and insulted. On returning to town the girl hastened to Hawkins with the story and without more ado he armed himself and went in search of the friend. After a few words Hawkins drew his gun and shot his victim down in cold blood. The family of Hawkins, realizing the seriousness of the situation, employed Cooper & Harness and O’Brien & Shirley, leading local lawyers, and instructed them to engage some famous criminal lawyer from Chicago or Indianapolis. Because Senator Voorhees had been remarkably successful in murder cases involving wrongs to women, he was engaged as the leading lawyer for the defense. Such vigorous steps to free the murderer of his son led the father of the victim, who had befriended Kern in his younger days, to engage him as special prosecutor. The case attracted state-wide attention. There were circumstances in the case differentiating it so radically from the cases of Mary Harris and Johnson that Voorhees was considerably embarrassed, but the matchless forensic orator exerted himself to the utmost. The closing arguments of Voorhees and Kern were made the same day, the older man speaking in the afternoon with his customary eloquence to a court room packed to suffocation, with great crowds packed tightly in the corridors outside and down the stairway. Kern closed at night in the presence of an equally great crowd. Never, perhaps, did he speak with greater power or eloquence. In the early part of his argument he turned his batteries of ridicule upon Voorhees in an effort to overcome the prestige of his name. So keen was this ridicule that Voorhees, hardened though he was by the blows of innumerable forensic battles, and until then, a warm friend of the younger man, squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, and turning to one of his co-counsel, asked, “Is he trying to insult me in this community?”