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Show DEFECTIVE LETTER EHEISJIB CASE Peculiarities of the Typewriter Used as Testimony to Establish Es-tablish Authorship. SUPREME COURT DECLARES ' EYJDENCF NOT COMPETENT Henry H. BlaUc. Convicted of Criminal Conspiracy, Is Granted New Trial. Henry 11. Wake, convicted .In the Fourth Judicial district court of criminal conspiracy, con-spiracy, was granted a new trial by the supreme court Monday. Tho opinion was written by Chief 'Justice D. N. Straup and was concurred In by liic other justices. jus-tices. , A peculiar defect in the letter "h" of a Remington typewriter entered largely Into the case. Hlake was accused of attempting at-tempting to defraud E. A. Horn of Independence. In-dependence. Utah, of real estate valued at $1500. The real estate was exchanged fur stock In tho Gnliher Mining company, com-pany, which stock was afterwards found to he worthless. Horn bought the stock, it was brought out, on tho strength of certain letters purporting to have been written by W. L. Johnson of San Francisco. Fran-cisco. The letters advised Horn that the writer considered the mining stock of value, bul advised him to pay not more than fit) cents a share for it. as Johnson had bought some at 17 cents. Stock la Worthless. Horn, upon learning from the secretary of the. company that the stock wa.s of no value, owing largely to the fact that the ore was of low grad and that the mine was twenty-live miles from a railroad, rail-road, sought lo recover his real estate, hut. inasmuch as the real estate had been transferred several times, he was unsuccessful unsuc-cessful In his efforts. He therefore enured criminal action to he InstlLuted against Blake, who. he alleged, had. with William A. Brlttain. an alleged co-conspirator, written the letters purporting lo have come from Johnson. In the letters, whleh were written on stationery bearing the water-mark. "Colorado "Col-orado bond." the defective letter of the typewriter was apparent. The lower court admitted this us evidence of the authorship author-ship of the letters. Evidence of Authorship. Tills point was controverted hv unim-peaehed unim-peaehed testimony that the letters hud. in fad. liecn written by Johnson. On this point there was evidence lo the effect th.it other typewriters might he defective as well as the one on which the letters had been written, and that the particular brand of stationery could be obtained in the opeif market. In its conclusions relative to this phase, the supremo court says: "The circumstances shown, though of a suspicious character, yet were not sufficient suf-ficient to raise such a logical Inference that these letters were written by Rrlt-tain Rrlt-tain or BlaJre in the face of the" unim-peached unim-peached testimony that W. L. Johnson of San Francisco wrote the letters. Without With-out these letters, there Is no evidence to prove the essential allegation, v.ilh respect re-spect to the- fiilsity of the representations representa-tions made by P.lake of the character and value of the mining stock." |