Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1880 — CADET WHITTAKER. [ARTICLE]

CADET WHITTAKER.

The Report of Ihe West Point Court of Inquiry. The conclusions of the Court of Inquiry in the case of Cadet Whittaker are as follows: 1. The court is unable to believe that such slight wounds as Cadet Whittaker received could have been inflicted by persons in the manner and under the circumstances described by him. 2. It does not sec why a man with his surroundings ami in his condition and frame of mind, as shown by his own evidence, should have submitted to an assault such as is alleged without summoning assistance during the assault or immediately thereafter. 3. It Is'lieves a person tied as he was and left as he claims to have been could readily have released himself had he exerted himself to do so. 4. From the testimony of the Post Surgeon and others the court is compelled to believe Cadet Whittaker was neither asleep nor insensible when he was examined on the morning of April <>, 1880, but that he was feigning. 5. The court is not able to discover any motive that any person, other than Cadet Whittaker, could have had in making such assault, and there is no evidence whatever that any person did it. (1. It believes that the hair-clipping, flesh-cutting and Wnding could all have been accomplished by Cadet Whittaker himself. 7. The theory that the note of warning is an imitation of Cadet Whittaker’s handwriting is, in the opinion of the court,-untenable. The severe tests to which experts in handwriting were subjected, and their positive testimony, place it Is-.yond a doubt that Cadet Whittaker himself wrote the note of warning, and therefore that he is not ignorant of the person or persons engaged in the ailair. This latter conclusion is strengthened by the fact that one-half of the sheet of pajier on which this note is written was found in Cadet Whittaker’s possession. The opinion of the court is as follows : From the strong array of circumstantial evidence, from testimony of exjxirts in handwriting, and from the conflicting statements of Cadet Whittaker and lack of veracity evinced by him in certain cases during the investigation, as shown by the evidence, the court is of the opinion that the imputation upon the character of Cadet Whittaker, nd erred to in the order convening the court and contained in the official reports of the C inmandant of Cadets and Post Surgeon, is fully sustained. . When the report was sent, to Gen. Schofield and read by him, he caused a letter to be addressed to Col. Lazelle, Commandant of the corps of cadets, directing the arrest of Whittaker and placing him in confinement in his room. The order was promptly carried out, and Whittaker will reniain under arrest until the case is disposed of, and a guard will keen him under surveillance. Whittaker still protests his innocence. The findings of the court have been forwarded to the War Department. Prof. R. T. Greener, of Washington, who was one of Whittaker’s volunteer aids, denounces the methods employed by the Court of Inquiry to convict him. He says the entire force of the so-called investigation was directed, not toward finding out who might have committed the outrage, but toward proving Whittaker guilty, and that he has been prejudiced in suppositions, assumptions, insinuations and erpert testimony.