DIE IS CAST. Jury Hold Fate of Trefethen and Smith. Ex-Gov. Long Makes Splendid Argument for Prisoners. Chief Defendant Weeps With Bowed Head. Attorney-General Pillsbury Sums Up for State. Verdict May be Arrived At and Delivered Today.
The question whether or not the lives of James Albert Trefethen and William H. Smith will pay the penalty of the crime with the committal of which they have been charged, the murder of Tena Davis, will in all probability be solved within a few hours.
After a trial lasting eight days and involving a mass of testimony, exhaustive in its dimensions and carefully arranged in its details, the case will this morning be presented to the 12 good and true men who constitute the jury.
Seldom has a trial in Massachusetts called out such an amount of public interest, or its progress been watched with greater anxiety or more conjecture as to the probable outcome.
Every day since it commenced, standing room has been at a premium within the court room, and hundreds have been unable to obtain admission.
A mass of testimony has been presented, wholly of a circumstantial nature, tending to establish the guilt of the prisoners. The defence was an alibi, in which a number of witnesses testified that Trefethen and Smith were both in some other place at the time at which the government claimed Tena Davis met her death.
The government recognized the gravity of the charge, and the public importance attached to it by assigning the attorney-general to prosecute, with the district attorney of Middlesex county, P.H. Coomey, in the case.
The prisoners, on the other hand, had the benefit of the able advocacy of ex-Gov. John D. Long, who never perhaps showed his remarkable legal acumen and recognized ability to greater advantage than in his closing appeal to the jury on behalf of the prisoners.
He had as associate counsel Hon. Marcellus Coggan, ex-mayor of Malden, whose opening address on behalf of the prisoners was a careful and able presentation of the outlines of the defence which was afterwards submitted.
The Testimony was all in
at 11 o’clock yesterday morning, and after a preliminary skirmish between counsel on some law points, the closing addresses were begun.
Ex-Gov. Long, as counsel for the prisoners, was the first to present his side of the case to the jury. If the jury do not conclude that Trefethen and Smith are more sinned against than sinning, that they have suffered and are suffering unjustly, it will not be due to any lack of effort on the part of the ex-governor.
In an address of three hours and 25 minutes duration he presented the arguments on which, at its close, he confidently asked the jury to acquit his clients.
During the delivery of the address he held the strictest attention of everybody present, and at times held the audience spell-bound. In language of poetic beauty he painted a picture of the dead girl, pure in her motives and intentions, but the victim of unfortunate circumstances and misfortune, falling a prey to the wiles of some one other than Trefethen, and advanced the theory of suicide as the means by which she came to her death.
He spoke in feeling terms of the dead girls head being pillowed on the soft and yielding bed of the Mystic river, while Trefethen was being charged with the murder.
Dealing with the evidence, counsel spoke of that part of it referring to the cloth or robe hanging from the buggy seen by Officer Tufts at the corner of Ferry st. and Broadway on the night of Tena’s disappearance. With outstretched hand and in tremulous tones he asked: “Great heavens, gentlemen, has it come to that, that you would strangle a man by the neck until he is dead because an officer saw a cloth in a buggy?”
As the terrible words were uttered with dramatic force by counsel, the lips of the prisoner Trefethen twitched nervously, as though the terrible suggestion had unmanned him for the moment.
With the exception of one or two similar occasions when his advocate repeated the same question, and asked if two men’s lives were to be sacrificed because a hair was found twisted around the bottom of the buggy, or there was a similarity between the handwriting of the deceased and the prisoner, there was no visible sign of emotion apparent on the face of the prisoners.
During the reply of the attorney-general, however, Trefethen’s face became flushed and took on
A Troubled Appearance
as the counsel for the government took up the tangled threads of evidence and sought to weave them into a web around him. He was evidently suffering mental torture, and it was plainly visible in his countenance. Smith, on the other hand, was as cool as at any time during the trial, and manifested no concern whatever.
The closing argument of ex-Gov. Long was concluded at 3.30, and after a recess of five minutes Attorney-General Pillsbury commenced his reply for the government. He spoke with his usual ability and with his customary grace of expression and ele- Continued on the Twelfth Page.
The Boston Globe – 4 May 1892, Wed Return to the top Return to James A. Trefethen web page