The Editor's Bag and a bitter feeling toward Boyer on that day in Hundley. Hundley was loaded, and so was his gun, and the re sult of the combination was that Wil liam Boyer was then shot to death by William Hundley. Hundley was arrested, indicted, and put on trial. His defense was insanity. He was tried before a jury, and Judge Isaac C. Parker, afterwards a United States Judge in the Indian Territory, noted for the number of his convictions in criminal cases, who was set on con viction in this case. It may have been because he was a Union sympathizer. The jury found Hundley guilty and he was sentenced to be executed. But the end was not yet. An appeal was taken to the District Court of that district, a court composed of the circuit judges of that district, one of whom was Judge Jonas J. Clark, an eccentric character and Union soldier of that day. "Judge Clark had been accused of aberrations of the mind, and had him self admitted in public that he had a fellow-feeling for a certain defendant who had set up the defense of insanity in his court. He would never take a public conveyance for the purpose of getting around his circuit, and if his horses were employed on his farm, he would walk from county seat to county seat, sometimes more than thirty miles a day. He adjourned court one day while I was trying a case before a jury, to look up a blooded boar that had gotten loose. Another time he excused a jury for the reason that the weather was fine for killing his hogs. When this Hundley case came before him as District Judge, he was very much worried about the question of the sanity of Hundley. He therefore determined to see and con verse with him himself, and went to St. Joseph, where he was confined, for that purpose. He reported that as a result
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of that interview he was convinced that Hundley was sane. It was after wards told that Hundley asked the sheriff who it was that had come to see him, and when told that it was Judge Clark, he exclaimed: "Why, that old fellow is as crazy as a loon." "The case subsequently went to the Supreme Court, which then held a ses sion at St. Joseph. It reversed it be cause the court of its own motion in structed the jury that it devolved upon the defendant to show to their satisfac tion by a clear preponderance of the testimony that he was insane when any evidence which reasonably satisfied them that the accused was insane at the time the act was committed, should have been deemed sufficient. And again, be cause the court in its instructions did not properly distinguish between tem porary insanity produced immediately in an ordinarily sane person by volun tary intoxication and insanity remotely occasioned by previous bad habits. This was one of the early cases deciding the relation of intoxication to responsibility for crime. (46 Mo. 415.) "In this case H. A. Vories, so well known at the St. Joseph bar, made the last and supreme effort of his life on behalf of the defendant. Broken down with weight of years and sickness, his face furrowed with wrinkles and his breathing difficult because of asthma, he was carried up the steep wooden steps to the court room where the Su preme Court was then holding its ses sion. When friends endeavored to dis suade him from going, he replied with characteristic vehemence, 'By God, I will go to save that boy if they take me away in a coffin.' "And when they unwrapped him from the innumerable wraps with which he was usually and then enveloped, and he came forth therefrom like a modern
