Report of the case of John W. Webster, indicted for the murder of George Parkman, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts : including the hearing on the petition for a writ of error, the prisoner's confessional statements and application for a commutation of sentence, and an appendix containing several interesting matters never before published / by George Bemis.

  • Webster, John White, 1793-1850.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the case of John W. Webster, indicted for the murder of George Parkman, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts : including the hearing on the petition for a writ of error, the prisoner's confessional statements and application for a commutation of sentence, and an appendix containing several interesting matters never before published / by George Bemis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    I do not know that it is necessary for me to add another word, Gentlemen, upon the law which governs this case, or the manner in which the grand jury have presented the charge against the prisoner. You are to consider whether it is satisfactorily shown, be- yond a reasonable doubt, —and the nature of that doubt we shall have occasion to discuss hereafter, — that Dr. Parkman came to his death by the hand of the prisoner at the bar. If it is, unless something is shown in a manner satisfactory to your minds, that the act was committed under such circumstan- ces, as in the eye of the law, (as will be stated to you by the Court,) reduce it to a lesser offence than the grand jury have charged against him, your verdict must be, that this indictment is proved. And, Gentlemen, while you will carefully, considerately, and as true men, hearken to the evidence ; while you will give to the case that patient and conscientious attention which a just regard for the interests of the Commonwealth demands of you ; and while you will give to the prisoner the full benefit of every legal presumption, and of every legal doubt which the law accords to him, and the facts may jus- tify : — if, upon this whole case, when we shall have laid it all before you, the conviction shall be impressed upon your minds, that he is legally responsible to the violated justice of the Commonwealth, for the murder of an honored and unof- fending fellow-citizen, I trust that you will have the firmness to say so by your verdict. The Attorney General having concluded his opening statement at one o'clock, the Court took a recess of a few minutes. On the resumption of the session, Mr. Clifford stated to the Court, that it would be highly desirable, at some stage of the trial, that the jury should be permitted to go to the Medical College, and take a view of the premises wrhere the murder was alleged to have been committed; that the localities were such, that they could not be understood from any plan or model; and that much of the evidence would relate to details connected with the construction of the building and the com- plicated connection of its various parts, which it was of the utmost consequence should be correctly apprehended by the jury. — That, perhaps the Court, if they deemed the motion a expressed no dissent,) — upon the point of the legal presumption attaching to secret homicides.