Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1893 — Such Fun Too Costly Now. [ARTICLE]

Such Fun Too Costly Now.

Popping at a man with a pistol because you do not happen to like him is going to have in the future some disagreeable consequences. In the good old times if the man shot at got hit and the doctors cut him up and killed him, there would follow a trial, of course, and some inconvenience to the shootist, but acquittal usually was the result, and the shootist bore thereafter all the honors custom decreed one who bad “killed his mam” Those good old times are gone, however, for the United States District Court in Mississippi has stepp.d to the front and put a price on killing or trying to kill a man that will be prohibitory. As related by the Mobile Register it happened this way: “James A. Mayfield, James H. and George D. Sisk met one J. M. Ross in Amory, Miss., two years ago and filled him to the muzzle with cold lead bullets. They did not like Ross, so they loaded him . with lead arid tried to sink the life out of him. Ross, however, managed to pull through and did not die: on the contrary he lived to bring suit in a United States Court, demanding that his assailants pay him 810,000 damages done to his anatomy by the coid lead they had sprinkled into him There was a hot legal contest, with talented lawyers on both sides, John M. yien, of Tunica, appearing for the defendants and J. 11. Watson, of Memphis, for the plaintiff, and the jury, after two hours’ deliberation, brought in a verdict for Ross for the full amount claimed. People may judge wh it a catastrophe this proved to he for the defendants by the fact that as soon as the verdict was rendered they made a general assignment for the benefit of all their creditors.