| Show A SAD CASE At last men came to set me frea I askd not why and reckd not where My very chains and I grew friends So much a long communon tends To make us what we arc even IRe I-Re nined my freedom with a sigh A sad story comes from Lansing Mich Early in the 50s JAMES HITCHCOCK who lived in Bunker Hill thatstate quarreled with an acquaintance on the highway and killed him by inflicting a knifo wound He was tried by QUO course of law and sentenced sen-tenced to the penitentiary for life He insisted in-sisted that he had killed his acquaintance in selfdefense but could not establish it in court A few days ago however the principal witness died and confessed on his death bed to perjury in the HITCHCOCK HITCH-COCK case It was this which led to HITCH COCKS pardon after serving thirtythree years in the state prison When the inoffensive inof-fensive old man was pardoned he was the I oldest convict in the prison It was a new worjd that he stepped into from his living tomb Ho had never ridden on railway train never heard the click of a telegraph instrument nor the articulate vibrations of the telephone Sadder still his wife was dead and his family so scattered that no trace of them could be found Liberty had come but its blessings to him must be a deeper loneliness than imprisonment The old man is a pitiable figure bowed aud bent his hair and beard snowy white and his face colorless He wanders about the capitol corridors daily peering wistfully through swinging doors into the legislative halls He has asked the legislature to appropriate ap-propriate 3000 for him Tiis inhis old age on the assumption that he is innocent and was wrongfully imprisoned which doubtless Is the case There ought to be little hesitancy hesi-tancy if the facts are as reported It would be but a small compensation for the wrong the state has inflicted on him through the false testimony of a wretch for whom the fires of hell are altogether too cool Cases of this kind splendidly illustrate tile doctrine doc-trine in law that it is better that ninety nine guilty persons should escape the penalty pen-alty of the law than that one innocent man should suffer |
