| Show JURORS AND NEWSPAPERS Some Interesting Features of the Durrant Trial San Francisco Aug 12 Todays proceedings pro-ceedings In the case of Theodore Dur rant charged with the murder of Blanche Lamont did not complete the jury The morning session passed without the addition of a single juror In fact the number of accepted Jurors was reduced from nine to eight for the court excused Juror Brown In a long opinion Judge Murphy said that he would allow the District Attorney to challenge Brown because the prosecution prosecu-tion did l not know at the time Brown was accepted that he voted to acquit M D Howell of the charge of counterfeiting counter-feiting in the United States District Court because the evidence was circumstantial cir-cumstantial The District Attorney Interposed In-terposed a peremptory challenge to Brown and the court allowed It The defense took an exception and moved to dismiss the case a motion which was promptly denied The court then took up the defendants defend-ants motion lor contemnt proceedings against the newspapers which had published pub-lished matter connected with Juror Brown and had Interviewed him regarding re-garding his availability as a Juror The court made an address to the press stating that the publication of any articles tending to destroy the defendants de-fendants chances for receiving a fair trial was contempt and warning news paer men of the necessity of conservative conserva-tive treatment of this and similar cases He declined to act upon the newspaper citations Issued at the request re-quest of the defendant The counsel tried to Insist upon the contempt actions ac-tions being pressed and urged the court to make a Judicial order defining the matter the newspapers might publish pub-lish regarding the trial but the Judge declined further action in the matter |
