Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1910 — BRIDGE GRAFT CASES [ARTICLE]

BRIDGE GRAFT CASES

Will Come Up for Action at February Term of Court. Prosecutor Longwell was over from Brook Thursday and yesterday. Sickness in his family, of which he has had rather more than his share the past few years, prevented Mr. Longwell’s attendance in court here this term. At the beginning of she term his mother took sick and he accompanied her to Indianapolis to undergo a severe surgical operation. While she was on the operating table he received word that one of his children was sick and not expected to live. Thanks to a kind providence both are better and will recover. It .has not been Mr. Longwell’s intention to press the several state cases pending here against C. L. Bader, the Winamac bridge man, pending the appeal to the supreme court cf the Mi’roy tp., bridge which resulted in conviction, but in order to make these cases “hold” it is necessary that something be done at the next term of court and, unless they are continued by agreement they will likely be tried then. A state case can not go over more than three terms of court without trial unless the continuance is by some' act of the defendant. Hence the necessity for the defense to agree to or ask for a continuance. - Should the judgment of the lower court be affirmed it is not likely the other cases will ever come to trial, as Mr. A- ■...--/' ■'A A

Bader will then have to go to prison for two years anyway, and the punishment will be considered adequate by most people. It is not customary where a conviction results in one of several indictments for crime carrying a penitentiary penalty to push the remainder of the cases, and there is no necessity to go to the expense of a trial in these cases .unless the cas'e in the supreme court should be" reversed. Mr. Longwel 1 is not “dodging” these cases however, as intimated by the Republican, and if the defendant really wants to go to trial at the next term he will very, likely be accommodated. We are] glad to say that the opinion of th/ Republican,-impugning the prosecutor’s motives in these graft cases, is shared by very few people in Jasper county. He has simply done his duty as an honest official should, and a very large majority of the people of Jasper county are with him in his efforts to bring the grafters to justice, regardless of what may be said in certain quarters to the contrary.