Three months later, before the same judge, these convicted agents stood up to receive their criminal sentence. The judge gave them the lightest sentence in his power, "nominal punishment." He did so, he was reported by the Buffalo press to have said, because "it has come to the attention of the court that civil suits have been brought to recover damages sustained by reason of the same overt acts. Large punitive damages are demanded in those actions. It is fundamental that a person cannot be punished twice for the same offence." The judge released them from the suits for damages because they were to be punished criminally. Then he released them from any but nominal punishment, because there had been suits for damages. One would infer that the civil suits for damages were in full career in the courts, to end possibly in hundreds of thousands of dollars' damages against the convicted. No one would infer what was the truth--and who should have remembered it so well as the judge, for it was he who had done it?--that the civil suits had been ordered sold. The judge had ordered his officer--the receiver--who had the luckless Matthews' affairs in his grip, not to try the cases, but to sell them. The suits had been ordered sold in February preceding, and they were as dead as--justice. But as all the technical formalities and slow proceedings needed to consummate the sale had not been completed when sentence was passed in May, the damages they might produce were made a reason for inflicting none but nominal punishment. The order of sale made it impossible that they should ever be tried. Of the money paid into court, nearly half--$30,000--went to the lawyers, and, crudest stroke of all, the attorney who had made the successful motion before the judge to take Matthews' property away, and to order the forced sale, got $5000. Matthews got nothing. Even his right to sue his destroyers had been sold to them on their own motion and at their own price. The crime was plotted in March, 1881. The participants were indicted in 1886. It took until May 15, 1887, to secure conviction. While sentence was still unpronounced Matthews' property was put into the hands of a receiver of the court, January 16, 1888; the property was sold by order of the court, February 17, 1888; sentence was pronounced May 8, 1888; the formalities of the sale were consummated July 11, 1888; and the sentence, coming last of all--the fine of $250--was executed May 1, 1889.