AN ILL-ADVISED PROSECUTION
Yesterday morning, Rufus Temple was examined before Judge Shepheard on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences, and acquitted. We are disposed to make a specific and more extended reference to this matter than its importance would seem to demand, from the fact that Mr. Temple is said to be an honest, industrious young man, who has been placed in an unfavorable light before the public by being arraigned in a Court of Justice on a criminal charge. The testimony, which signally failed to sustain the charge, went simply to show that the defendant, who follows the trade of a caulker, had been employed by Mr. Vice (the prosecuting witness) to do some extra work on the steamer Nina Tilden; that Temple presented a bill of thirty dollars to Mr. V. for this work, which was for some reason refused, upon which the bill was presented to Mr. Tilden, the owner or one of the owners of the vessel, who remarked, in substance, that he was not the proper person to pay such bills, but, as he did not wish any claims to stand against the vessel, he would pay it, which he did, taking Mr. Temple's receipt there for. Upon learning the fact of the payment, Mr. Vice saw the city prosecutor, and a verified complaint was made, embodying the averment that Temple had represented to Mr. Tilden that he was sent to him (Tilden) with a verbal order from affiant for the payment of the bill. Mr. Tilden, who was a witness for the prosecution, denied, on his oath, that Temple had made any such representation, and that fact being the gist of the offence, the prosecution was at once abandoned. We cannot but speak in terms of the strongest condemnation of the reprehensible manner in which parties very frequently come into the Police Court, under the sanction of the Prosecuting Attorney. With all of perjury except the technical animus, they seek to wield this tribunal as a mollifier of their personal feelings, as if it were instituted as a general dispenser of the lex talionis. It is indeed a fortunate thing for the community that we have just such a man as Judge Shepheard on the bench, where discrimination and decision are so much required.
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search