for the able manner in which he had presented his case, and the
Court inquired if Judge Wing wished to proceed at once. Judge Wing
said he was ready to proceed if the Court desired he should go on.

* * * * *

AN APPEAL FOR COUGHLIN.

Judge Wing's address to the jury on behalf of Daniel Coughlin was
an able effort, lasting over two days. He took the ground that
there was absolutely no evidence whatever against his client, and
quoted numerous cases in the criminal records of New York, Chicago
and other cities to demonstrate the fact that circumstantial
evidence was totally unreliable, and that it would be monstrous if
a man's guilt or innocence were to be based upon a previous
conviction. He urged that prejudice should not effect the verdict,
and that the jury should not be biased against his client simply
because he was a member of the Clan-na-Gael. The whole case, he
said, was circumstantial, was interwoven with doubts,
contradictions and possibilities, so as to be practically of no
strength whatever when taken in a mass. Counsel reviewed the
testimony of other witnesses for the State as it affected Coughlin,
casting doubt on the evidence of Mertes, the milkman, scoring Major
Sampson, and insisting there was no absolute proof that it was
Dinan's white horse that drove the Physician to his death. Speaking
of Sampson, he asked the members of the jury if they were going to
act upon the word of a thief. Could they look the prisoner's wife
in the face and say to her, "I sent your husband to prison upon the
words of Major Sampson?" Could they go to his children and say to
them, "I have made you, by my verdict the children of a felon. I
have put eternal griefs upon you upon the words of a man who goes
about the country with public speakers, seeking sporting
privileges, and working 'Grangers' with the 'shell game?'" As to
the knife episode, he said, that never since crime was committed by
man had anyone heard of a guilty man keeping souvenirs of his
crime, or preserving such evidences of his guilt. Never in the
history of the world had such a thing occurred. The speaker went
into the Camp 20 phase of the evidence, insisting there was an
absolute lack of proof that any conspiracy had existed. He touched
upon the telephone messa