Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-03-28 | Page 9 | Seattle Mayor is Witness for Self

SEATTLE MAYOR IS WITNESS FOR SELF Enters "Profanely Emphatic" Benial of Charges of Bribery in Liquor Selling Cases. SEATTLE, Wash., March 27. Mayor Hiram C. Gill, principal defendant in the so-called whisky graft case on trial here in the United States district court, went on the witness stand today in his own behalf. He declared tho accusation accusa-tion of Logan Billingsley, chief witness for the prosecution, that he had accepted accept-ed a bribe of $1000 from the liquor seller was false, and made his statement profanely emphatic. A little later the mayor flatly contradicted testimony of the Rev. Dr. Mark A. Matthews as to a conversation in which the clergyman and the mayor engaged concerning the alleged bribe. The other defendants on trial are Chief of Police Charles L. Beckingham and four city detectives, all charged with conspiracy to import liquor into the state of Washington. Under cross-examination .Mayor Gill denied with some heat that in his legal practice he had made a specialty of ''defense of men of the underworld." " I 'm a pretty good criminal lawyer, a pretty good civil lawyer," shoutea the mayor. "I'll go back and make a living from my law practice when I get tired of being mayor."