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Acquittal of Frederick Olney

Charles C Burleigh; William H. Burleigh

The Unionist 1834-04-10

Unionist content

Transcription

We finish this week, the Report of Mr. Olney’s Trial, as furnished us by MR. FOSTER, a young gentleman of acknowledged skill and fidelity as a reporter; and in this presenting to the public an impartial statement of the testimony in the case, we cannot but repeat our expression of astonishment that a man should have been arrested and bound over for trial, against whom there was not a shadow of proof—not even enough to have fixed suspicion upon a man of generally suspicious character, much less upon Olney, whose character stands as fair, as that of any person concerned in his arrest, examination, or trial. A man who can come out from such a trial, not only with a triumphant acquittal, but with a character so perfectly fair and unimpeached, notwithstanding all the pains which had been taken beforehand to hunt up something against him—the inquiries among his fellow-townsmen, where a man’s errors are likely to be known if he has committed any serious ones—has certainly abundant reason to complain of the injustice of being subject to so much trouble and expense on so slight grounds—rather so utterly without any grounds, as Mr. Olney has been. We do not much wonder that the Advertiser, the organ of those concerned in the arrest and prosecution of Olney, should contain a Report of the evidence, (probably from the pen of Judson himself, or some of his partizans,) so discolored in various parts, as to have quite a different impression on the mind of readers who heard none of the testimony, from that which the testimony itself would have left if they had heard it. We do not much wonder, for instance, that the Advertiser’s report should entirely leave out that part of Maria Robinson’s testimony in which she says that Mr. Olney had not been alone in the room more than a minute before the fire was discovered, thus showing it to have been absolutely impossible that he could have fired the house. We mention this as one example of the accuracy of that report, but any one who will compare it carefully with Mr. Foster’s, will find many other features of dissimilarity calculated to weaken the strongly unfavorable impressions which an accurate report would have produced, towards those at whose instance Olney was arrested.

About this Item

In this further commentary on the acquittal of Frederick Olney, we learn that the Windham Advertiser had been publishing misleading partial reports on the trial, and had left out Mariah Robinson's key testimony - another erasure of a Black woman.

It seems likely that "Mr. Foster" is La Fayette S. Foster (1806-1880)

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