Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 176, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1910 — Lawyer’s Odd Plea Sets Negro Free [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Lawyer’s Odd Plea Sets Negro Free

NEW YORK.—M. Bourke Cockran’s eloquence won the acquittal in the court of general sessions of Victor Nelson, a negro, accused of the murder on March 28 last of Claude Humphreys, another negro. Cockran was assigned to defend Nelson by Judge Malone. [The jury gave its verdict at 8:45 p. m. All its members requested Mr. Cockran to give them a copy of his address In defense of his client. “I can scarcely expect you to treat this negro like a peer. Then treat him like a dog,” said Cockran in his summing up of the case. “Yes, treat him like a dog, if you must. A dog that bites wantonly we kill, but a dog that bites in defense of his own master’s home we protect. Men have given their lives in defense of Buch a dog. Give my client the samt shift you would give such a dog.”

Mr. Cockran began his address to the jury by reminding the jurors that with one exception they had said they were not prejudiced against a negro. “We accepted this one man with an avowed prejudice,” said Mr. Cockran, “because we believed he was honest in his avowals that he would be fair in any cafce. “But I am sure that you all feel a prejudice against a negro. I feel the same prejudice myself. I once stopped In a hotel, where there were private baths. I started to take a bath and found that a negro was using the tub. Do you think that I bathed In that tub afterward? I could not It was prejudice that I could not rid myself of, and I do not feel that such prejudice can be avoided.” The kiling, according to Mr. Cockran, was the outgrowth of the social and economic conditions In this country. He said that his client, while a high school graduate, had tried to secure decent work in this country, but had finally found himself driven to accept work as a scullion, in the house where Humphreys was introduced to him. i