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FIELDEN, NEEBE AND SCHWAB.
143

full, and it was asked to stop it, but refused to pay any attention to the matter, but permitted Ryce to go on, and then forced the defendants to go to trail before this jury.

While no collusion is proven between the judge and the State's attorney, it is clearly shown that after the verdict and while a motion for a new trial was pending, a charge was filed in court that Ryce had packed the jury, and that the attorney for the State got Mr. Favor to refuse to make an affidavit hearing on this point, which the defendants could use, and then the court refused to take any notice of it unless the affidavit was obtained, although it was informed that Mr. Favor would not make an affidavit, but stood ready to come into court and make a full statement if the court desired him to do so.

These facts alone would call for executive interference, especially as Mr. Favor's affidavit was not before the Supreme Court at the time it considered the case.

RECENT DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT AS TO COMPETENCY OF JURORS.

II.

The second point argued seems to me to be equally conclusive. In the case of the People vs. Coughlin, known as the Cronin case, recently decided, the Supreme Court, in a remarkably able and comprehensive review of the law on this subject, says, among other things:

"The holdings of this and other courts is substantially uniform, that where it is once clearly shown that there exists in the mind of the juror, at the time he is called to the jury box, a fixed and positive opinion as to the merits of the case, or as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant he is called to try, his statement that, notwithstanding such opinion, he can render a fair and impartial verdict according to the law and evidence, has little, if any, tendency to establish his impartiality. This is so because the juror who has sworn to have in his mind a fixed and positive opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused, is not impartial, as a matter of fact. * * *

"It is difficult to see how, after a juror has avowed a fixed and settled opinion as to the prisoner's guilt, a court can be legally satisfied of the truth of his answer that he can render a fair and impartial verdict, or find therefrom that he has the qualification of impartiality, as required by the constitution. * * *

"Under such circumstances, it is idle to inquire of the jurors whether they can return just and impartial verdicts. The more clear and positive were their impressions of guilt, the more certain they may be that they can act impartially in condemning the guilty party. They go into the box in a sate of mind that is well calculated to give a color of guilt to all evidence, and if the accused escapes conviction, it will not be because the evidence has not established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but because an accused party condemned in advance, and called upon to exculpate himself before a prejudiced tribunal, has succeeded in doing so. * * *

"To try a cause by such a jury is to authorize men, who state that they will lean in their findings against one of the parties, unjustly to determine the rights of others, and it will be no difficult task to predict, even before the evi-