Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 262, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1913 — PITEOUS SENTENCE FOR HIDEOUS CRIME [ARTICLE]

PITEOUS SENTENCE FOR HIDEOUS CRIME

James L. Willis Goes to Jail for 90 Days and is Fined SSOO for Rape of Innocent Young Gin.

PUBLIC OUTRAGED. ■I.-. fi. Charles Humston, a Goodland Druggist, the One Man Who Refused to Give Willis the Punishment the Others Realized He So Richly Deserved—State’s Case Admirably Conducted and Able Arguments Made by Longwell, Leopold and Davis—Travesty on Justice Has Aroused Men and Women to a High Pitch of Indignation. ~ . / A strange miscarriage of justice has followed the commission of a crime so hideous that the recital of its details has brought tears to man| eyes and righteous indignation to the hearts of EVERY MAN AND WOMAN OF RESPECTABILITY - . James L. Willis, 30 years of age, a married man with two small'children, who has for years had the reputation of being a libertine and the common associate of women of. the vilest character, and whose name has in the past been associated with the ruin of young girls and with orgies in which one or two young men of the town have participated, is to serve 90 days in jail and pay a fine of SSOO for .the perpetration of a crime that is as revolting as anything that ever occurred in Jasper county. The Republican is going to divert a trifle from its accustomed course in giving some of the details of this terrible crime, in order that the people may understand its viciousness and also understand ifoow little regard some men have for the virtue of children and the chastity of woman, and how readily some men can be made to sympathize with one who commits this sort of crime and carry the weight of that sympathy to the point of disregarding the law and the evidence and of insulting the great mass of people who believe in law enforcement and in placing certain classes of criminals where there is no danger from their licentious tendencies.

by a man on horsebaek just as the oar was stopped and that tor about five minutes he pretended to be waiting for the lights to come on. Then he dragged her from the automobile and threw her on the ground and that she cried out and that be said, “You s. of a b. if you cry out again I will kill you.” Then he said “Did ever’ do this to you. The girl responded “No,” and he asked it again and she said “No,” and he choked her and she said she was afraid he would kill her and she said “Yes,” and with brute force he ravished her.

She does not know much follow-, ing that act. She knows that he brought her back to town and let her out some place, beyond* much doubt at the Mattie Benjamin earner. She reached home, her cheeks stained with tears, and told her step father and then her mother, and Mrs. O’Brien "told Mrs. A. L. Willis, mother of the man who had abused her. Willis came to the house and bluffed about being worth lots of money and that they could not do anything with him and that the little girl would do nothing hut ruin her own name, showing that he well knew the magnitude of his crime. The parents are and had not lived here long and the fiend’s parents were .neighbors and had been friends. They did not know what to do and the sorrow was smothered’ in their breasts until the following Tuesday, when a rumor about it was heard about town. Mr. O’Brien was seen and confirmed the rumor and said he was glad that some one had come to him, as he had worried himself sick about the matter, it* went to his home and again saw the little girt and then swore out the warrant against Willis. That is her story and there was to support it the statement of three doctors, E, N. Loy, I. M. Washburn and C. E. Johnson, who made an examination lour days later and found thfe bruised places on her neck and the ruptured and inflamed parts which had resulted. Willis claimed ’ that he had not left town at all, but had taken the little girl directly from the Ennis home to the Brady corner, two blocks from hqr home and let hei out. He had h\ father, his broth-

The Republican believes that the people should know the language this arch-fiend used to this little innocent girl, who was at the time employed in his family and who had therefore every cause to be her guard iaq and her protector. To inform them it is necessary to print a brief part of the testimony that we ordinarily would not publish. James L Willis on the evening of August Bth took his wife and two children and Clara Belle Thompson, 14 years of age, in his automobile and went to the home of James Ennis in the northwest part of town, where Mrs. Willis was having some dressmaking done. Leaving this family there, he took the Thompson girl, whose stepfather is J. J. O’Brien, for an automobile ride. She knows that they went by the “burying ground,” but does not know where it was. She knows that he took her to a lonely road and that he told her that it was 4 miles from town and a mile and a half from a house. She recalls that he turned the lights out and made some pretense that they could not be lighted until the gasoline yun down and that they were passed.

er-in-law and a young man named Hurley to swear that they saw him near 8 o’clock either at the garage or down town. Frank Ham testified that he saw him pass his residence and stop near the & P. Honan residence “after duslc,” and the Ennis family and some women who were at the Ennis home told that he had been at the Ennis house until near 7:30 o’clock. With this testimony they sought to prove an alibi, but with all that could be done there was still 20 minutes to a half hour unaccounted for and that is probably about all the time that was consumed in racing his car to the scene of the fiendish crime and racing it back again. There is a probability that the act was committed on the road be tween the Henry Paulus residence and the couVity farm, a lonely half mile road without «r residence from the Paulus corner With a view to impeaching the testimony of Willis in the trial Attorney Leopold would like to locate the mm|i who on horseback passed the oar that evening. \ There was not a hitch in the evidence brought out by the state and

there was an apparent coaching of the witnesses for the defense in the matter of time. Attorneys Leopold and Longwell and Davis deserve every praise from the good people for their splendid work. There would not be a jury in a thousand that would not have found him guilty and sentenced him to the full extent of the law, which would have been from 2 to 21 years, but this jury was the exception and the responsibility of giving this man aq insignificant sentence rests upon them all, while the one man who swerved the other eleven from their conviction of guilt is said to been Charles Humston, a Goodland druggist, who took the position that “the girl was herself not innocent” and he induced the others to drop the charge of rape and the charge of attempt and simply find him guilty of the charge of assault and battery. Bah! for such a juror. Ignoring the evidence of three doctors who told of the girl's condition, and ignoring the instructions of the court who said that consent was impossible in a girl under 16 years of age and ignoring the evidence of Mayor George F. Meyers, Walter V. Porter, Harry Jacobs, Joe Halfigan and H. W. Kiplinger, who said that his reputation for morality was bad, and ignoring the fact that the defense had failed to find a man In the entire com-

munity who was willing to say otherwise for him, this jury places a price on a little girl’s chastity at SSOO and a small Jail sentence. It is not the fault of the law, unless it be that the law requires a jury to return a unanimous verdict, leaving It possible for some distorted mind to block the means of justice. Every person who sat in the court room at 12:30 o’clock Sunday morning when Special Judge Barce completed hts charge and the jury retired expected a verdict of “guilty" of the charge of rape and expected that the jury would return in ten minutes. When it failed to come in the probability increased that there was one man holding off. Peculiarly there was no member of the jury who seemed to appreciate the magnitude of the crime or on whom the tears of a mother, a wife and a sister-in-law had a juaticeobstorueting effect. Many men woukl have been there until the crack of doom to demand that the full measure of the law be given to the perpetrator of thia crime. A Rensselaer woman called a number of Rensselaer people by telephone early Sunday morning and asked: “What are we to do?” She said, “I neger wanted to vote until this morning. Now I am a suffragette and I want to help to make the laws and to set on Juries and to lend my Influence to weed-

ing men of this type out of this community. A mother appeals to public sentiment in this issue of the* paper and recommends that an indignation meeting be called to discuss this horribly inadequate sentence for this hellish deed. The names of the jurymen who tried this case are: Ch'as. Hasslett, retired merchant, of Kentland. I Arthur Harrington, fanner, Goodland. Wm. Kline, farmer, Washington township. Eugene Steel, farmer, Kentland. Ohas. Humston, druggist, Goodland. T. P. Hansen, farmer. Lake township. Arthur Stilton, butcher, Kentland. , ' 3. U. Wildason, retired farmer, of Kentland. Wilson LeMaater, farmer, Goodland. Frank Herath, farmer, Brook. E. M. Lyons, farmer, Brook. Daniel Zumbaum, laborer, Kentland. Willis was committed to jail by Judge Barce and it is expected that he will be brought here some time today. He will spend his 90 days' sentence for “assault” in the county jail. A woman remarked Sunday that she would like to run the table during that time.

The Republican wishes to make it plain that the small punishment can not be laid to the door of the state attorneys. They were strong in every particular except perhaps (the failure to excuse Juror Hmnston. In the argument they were effective. Attorney Davis made the opening speech and it was a forceful one. Attorney Leopold made a good legal speech and covered the evidence quite completely, leaving nothing of importance for the defense. Attorney Longwell is an orator. His command of language, hie enthusiasm, his sincerity and his familiarity with the evidence and his spirit of confidence in the Judges of the law had given him power to make a closing argument that was regarded by* many in the court room as the best speech they had ever heard. It was 10:30 o’clock’ when Mr. Longwell concluded, the judge having placed a limit of an hour for each eide, and he could havfc talked for an hour more and found the audience in wrapt attention. The miscarriage of justice is a pity. It argues poorly for our citizenship and is the cause of other crimes and of adequate punishment outside the courts.