Charles Burleigh compares Fall River and Canterbury
Charles C. Burleigh
The Unionist 1833-09-05
Unionist content
Transcription
We feel it our duty to make the fact public, that one of the jury refused to listen to any remonstrance from his brother jurors, because the ‘law,’ the constitutionality of which, he was called on to decide, was ‘Judson’s Law!!’— Advertiser.
“We feel it our duty” to say in reference to the above, that we have conversed with one of the jurors, who informs us that he heard nothing said about the law, being ‘Judson’s law,’ or the “black law,” or the “Canterbury Law,” and that no disinclination was manifested to hear remonstrance or to listen to reason, and no disposition to take into consideration in making up the decision, anything but the law and the constitution, and the facts proved, unless the exception be found in an attempt of one juror to make the bad tendency of an acquittal, an argument for conviction. And “we feel it our duty” too, to remind the Advertiser of the reproofs he has, not many months since bestowed upon the Fall River Monitor for not quietly acquiescing in the result of a fair trial by a jury of the country. Oh! the beauty of consistency!
About this Item
Burleigh's reference to Fall River concerns the infamous Ephraim Avery trial, in which a Methodist minister was accused of the murder of a young female parishioner with whom, it was speculated, he had been having an affair. He was acquitted, but the case remained a major controversy. In the Wikipedia article on the incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Kingsbury_Avery -there are at least three full-length studies cited in the bibliography
