Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1910 — THE COURT HOUSE [ARTICLE]

THE COURT HOUSE

Items Picked Up About the County Capitol. Xew suits filed: Xo. 7654. - X 'ajiev Knight vs. Sarah A. Platt. et al.: action in partition, . The condition of “Shorty” Adams continues to grow worse dav by day and he is kept in the padded cell at the jail all the time now. Attorneys for the appellant, Mr. Bader, have petition for additional time to reply to the brief of the state in the bridge case of the State vs. Bader from this county, now pending in the supreme court. licenses issued: Sept. 2/, Alfred E. McCoy, of Jasper county, aged 54. occupation farmer. to Emma Josepninc Davis, daughter of James Davis of Jasper county, aged 38, occupation housekeeper. Third marriage for male, his first wife having <Jied -March 18, 1896, and second marriage dissolved by divorce in September, 1907. First marriage for female. Jay W. Stockton filed an affidavit in the clerk’s office Thursday afternoon, to replace an affidavit which he made Sept. 6 but which has come up missing, charging that the report in ■ the A. C. Pancoast ditch had been changed in many respects after it was originaly filed, April 18. 1 he matter of determining who changed the figures in this report between the time of its being filed and its coming before the court at the present term will likely be investigated. The changes are very material, Mr. Stockton alleges. As the Democrat never made the charges that the figures in the Milroy tp., bridge bid had been changed, they having been made by representatives of other bridge companies and to Prosecutor Longwell, the public will not readily discern where the Democrat had anything to do with influencing Mr. Longwell in the matter. The Republican’s idea of justice, however, will not admit of a republican prosecuting a republican, no matter how serious the alleged crime may be. Would that our narrow-minded contemporary codld imbibe a little of that good old democratic doctrine of "equal justice to all and special privileges to none:” There are no new developments in the Wheatfield school board muddle, caused by the alleged scandalous conduct recently of Ray G... Anderson, secretary of the board. Anderson is still standing pat on the efforts to get him to resign, and rumors, of court action are still rife. There will be another term of court here beginning the second Monday in Xovember, and the matter may then be put before a g.and jury and inquiry made into the truth of the current allegations against Anderson. If innocent he should court such an investigation. for no man of principle and good would want to rest under such charges as are current about him. “Shorty” Adams, who has been confined in jail the past two weeks or more, waiting for the officials at Longcliff to make room for his reception, was examined by a couple of alienists from Chicago Wednesday, who were brought here by the chief surgeon of the C. & E. I. railroad, in anticipation of possible suit for damages for the alleged injury to his head in being struck by some object while looking out of the caboose window of one of the trains on said road, on which he was braking. According to these learned gentlemen “Shorty” is incurably insane, caused from cigarettes ancl Other forms of disathe injury had nothing to do with his present condition. He will. be taken to Lpngcliff as soon as there is a vacancy 'there. ■ For a young attorney with the limited experience of Prosecutor I-ongwell, alone and single-hand-

ed to stand up in court and foaten or twelve hours fight inch by inch the six attorneys on the opposite side (some of whom are considered the best in northern Indiana) to get his evidence in the alleged bridge graft before the jury, as he did last Monday and Tuesday, was certainly a remarkable case of genuine honesty, nerve and perseverance such as is seldom witnessed in any court. Opposed also by the attorney of the taxpayers of Jasper county—-not merely the commissioners’ attorney, if you please, but the county attorney—who ought to have been by the side of the prosecutor in ferreting this thing to the very bottom and thus serving the people who pay his salary rather than the individuals who, at his own behest, employed him as “county attorney," we repeat that Mr. Longwell made a valiant effort against tremenduous odds to have this case tried on its merits. If the figures in that bid were changed between the time of the opening of the bids and the time it reach-. ed the auditor’s hands, (which could have scarcely been done without the knowledge of the commissioners) the taxpayers had a pght to know it and to try to fix the responsibility for the change. « Regardless of technical failure, we say, all honor to Prosecutor Longwell for his efforts to bring out the truth in this matter anti to serve his constituents as the statute contemplates he should serve them. Although opposed by his party’s machine here and fought by its organ, he has gone ahead and tried to do liis duty regardless of political consequences. Would that more judicial circuits in Indiana had Fred Longwell prosecutors.