The weakness of this case lay in the indirection of the bribe. Meysenburg, a business man of repute, took for his vote on the Suburban franchise, not money; he sold for $9,000 some two hundred shares of worthless stock. This might be made to look like a regular business transaction, and half a dozen of the best lawyers in the State appeared to press that view. Mr. Folk, however, met these lawyers point by point, and point by point he beat them all, displaying a knowledge of law which astounded them, and an attitude toward the prisoner which won the jury, and might well reform the methods of haranguing prosecutors all over this country. Naturally without malice, he is impersonal; he did not attack the prisoner. He was not there for that purpose. He was defending the State, not prosecuting the individual. “The defendant is a mere atom,” he tells his juries; “if we could enforce the law without punishing individuals, we should not be here; but we cannot. Only by making an example of the criminal can we prevent crime. And as to the prisoner, he cannot complain, because his own deeds are his doomsmen.” At one stage of the Faulkner trial, when ex-Governor Johnson was talking about the rights of the prisoner, Mr. Folk remarked that the State had rights also. “Oh, d—— the rights of the State!” was the retort, and the jury heard it. Many juries have heard this view. One of the permanent services Mr. Folk has rendered is to impress upon the minds, not only of juries, but of the people generally, and in particular upon the Courts of Appeal (which often forget it), that while the criminal law has been developed into a great machine to preserve the rights, and much more, of the criminal, the rights of the State also should be guarded. Meysenburg was found guilty and sentenced to three years. The man was shocked limp, and the ring broke. Kratz ran away. He was advised to go, and, like Murrell, he had promises of plenty of money; unlike Murrell, however, Kratz stood on the order of his going. He made the big fellows give him a large sum of cash, and for the fulfillment of their promise of more he waited menacingly in New Orleans. Supplied there with all he demanded, this Council leader stepped across into Mexico, and has gone into business there on a large scale. With Kratz safely away, the ring was nerved up again, and Meysenburg appeared in court with five well-known millionaires to give an appeal bond of $25,000. “I could have got more,” he told the reporters, “but I guess that’s enough.”