. garded, in comradeship with Rufus Choate of Boston and David Paul Brown of Phila delphia, as the greatest practitioner in crimi nal jurisprudence in the United States; and it was natural that Mr. Clinton's earliest pro fessional proclivities should tend toward practice in the criminal courts. Mr. Clinton first attracted attention while retained as junior counsel in a memorable murder case in New Jersey before ChiefJustice Hornblowcr, with Graham and Benj. Williamson (afterwards chancellor) as sen iors. The client was a young man named Spencer who had shot his wife. The de fense interposed was mental irresponsibility and it succeeded (i Zabriskie's reports 196). That defense was then comparatively novel, and it fell to Mr. Clinton to prepare the ex pert testimony and the brief upon the medical jurisprudence applicable. The charge, by that very great jurist Hornblower, largely paid compliment to Mr. Clinton's brief by embodying many of its expressions. The charge, — upheld by the Appellate Court — is generally referred to (as much so as the law in Oxford's case in England) wherever a similar defense is now-a-days interposed. Almost immediately Mr. Clinton was as signed to the United States Circuit Court of New York to defend a French sailor charged with an apparently motiveless larceny; and after examining case and client Mr. Clinton interposed an interlocutory plea of " not sane enough to be tried." Although the plea was combated by an ex-attorney general of the United States for the gov ernment, in a most able address, the jury found for Mr. Clinton. The newspapers of the day " pooh-poohed" the result, but law yer and jury were soon sustained by the fact that when committed to a lunatic asylum the client by his conduct there distinctly proved himself insane. Not long after wards it became Mr. Clinton's duty to inter pose another defense of mental irresponsi bility for a husband accused of murdering his wife. He failed to convince the jury, but
eventually satisfied the governor of the con vict's insanity, and obtained a commutation for him and he was sent to an insane asylum. Briefs in criminal cases now poured in upon Mr. Clinton, and he could be daily heard in defenses before Recorder Tallmadge in the Court of General Sessions or before Judge Edmonds in the Oyer and Terminer. He soon found an opportunity of crossing swords with his preceptor, Graham; in that both were respectively retained for two con spirators, and each having practically sepa rate defenses although compelled to be tried together by the exigency of the conspiracy count, Clinton's client got a merciful re commendation from the jury and was saved the disgrace of the State prison sentence that was awarded to the Graham client. It was on this occasion that a clever literary law yer who practiced in the Sessions, the late Robert D. Holmes, in view of Clinton's comparative success over Graham handed to the latter this copy of an old couplet. "To teach his grandson draughts his leisure he'd employ : — Until at last the old man was beaten by the boy."
It was observed among legal, as well as laymen, attendants of the Courts that while some defenders — and the Bar of the crim inal branches then comprised such brilliant advocates as James W. Gerard, Sr., Ed ward Sanford, James T. Brady, Horace F. Clark, John McKeon, Francis B. Cutting, James R. Whiting, Ambrose L. Jordan and Charles O'Conor, those gentlemen of over burdened practice — were rather addicted to the English practice of hurriedly preparing for trial upon briefs of attorneys, and press ing their ad captaudum brilliancy upon their retainers rather than painstaking plod; that nevertheless Mr. Clinton preferred dogged, persistent, thorough preparation even if it occasionally proved tedious to judge or jurors or spectators. It was also found that he was methodical (and not a few thought to super fluity) and addicted to what Abraham Lin
