656
THE GREEN BAG
vide that trial may be had in either county for offenses occurring within five hundred yards of the inter-county boundary line, P. L. 1860, p. 427) are recommended as "of real practical value" "to obviate the difficulty of proof" which occurs when it is doubtful in which county the offense has been actually perpetrated. The case came on for trial January 19, 1860, but Mr. Stevens did not take the lead ing part, a circumstance which was due in some measure to the fact that he was liable to be called away from the trial to his Con gressional duties in Washington. It was also ascribed to the reason that he was not accustomed to play the secondary part, even when so distinguished a criminal law yer as David Paul Brown was his colleague. ' Mr. Brown, it will be remembered, was al most a fop in dress and manner, and his rotund and pictorial oratory was of a kind with which Mr. Stevens had little sympathy. It is related that during the trial he mani fested a certain restiveness not common to him. The number of witnesses in attend ance on the case was unusually large. They were divided into rival bands of rank and rabid partisans, who gave noisy vent to their sympathies and met in nightly brawls at public places in the city. The trial lasted Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Mr. Hiester opened for the Commonwealth, but be fore he had entirely closed his argument, Mr. Stevens was granted leave to address the jury on behalf of the defense, as he was obliged to leave for Washington, his "pair" with an opposition member of the House ex piring that day. He deplored the rancor which had characterized the prosecution, defined the different grades of murder under the law, expressed regret that the prosecu tion was pressing for conviction of the higher grade, and urged that his client was at most guilty only of involuntary manslaughter. On Sunday the jury attended the Presby terian Church in the morning, St. James Episcopal Church in the afternoon, and heard a temperance service at the Moravian
Church in the evening. Mr. Hiester con cluded for the Commonwealth on Monday; the local newspaper reports that when he was followed by David Paul Brown, for the defense, who spoke nearly all afternoon. Brown's remarks "were listened to in deep silence and with such intense interest that although the bar was surrounded with an audience standing seven or eight deep, and the hall crowded to the door, it appeared like a collection of human statues." Colonel Fordney occupied the evening session with an address that lasted from half after seven until past ten o'clock. After being out two hours, the jury returned with a verdict of "not guilty," and such a scene of disorder ensued as the Lancaster County court house has probably never witnessed before or since. The newspaper reports that "for a time a stranger might have supposed him self in the hall of the House of Representa tives at Washington or in a court house where Sickles was tried and acquitted." The court crier stamped his foot and de manded silence, informing the crowd that they were "neither in a playhouse nor at a horse race." The street scenes until day light were even more uproarious and dis orderly. McFillen's friends engaging in a prolonged demonstration, cheering the de fendant's counsel and the jury, and groaning for the prosecution. Mr. Stevens, however, was not at home to see or hear the popular "vindication" of his last client in the crim inal courts. Years later he rendered a last service to the members of his profession by writing his own will, to which circumstance may be due in some part the fact that the contract for the orphans' home he founded was let only last month. The rapidly succeeding events of the war and his rise to leadership of his party, through parliamentary control of the popular branch of Congress, took him for ever from the Bar and ended his career as a practicing lawyer — with which only I have to do now. LANCASTER, PA., August, 1906.
