Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1887 — O’BRIEN CONVICTED. [ARTICLE]

O’BRIEN CONVICTED.

Sentenced To Imprisonment f>r Three Months—Balfour Determined. The trial of Mr. Wm. O’Brien at Mitchelstown, charged by the Government with sedition under the crimes act, was concluded Saturday. The accused was found'guilty and sentenced to three months, imprisonment. Notice of appeal from the judgment of the court was j given. ----- Upon Mr. O’Brien's arrival at Mitchelstown for trial he was received with cheering by large crowds, which had gathered to welcome him. The crowd manifested great excitement, but there were no indications of disorder. Mr. O'Brien was immediately conveyed hy his guards to the court room. Many English ladies were present to witness the trial, and Mr ; O’Brien was the recipient of bouquets from a number of them. The trial was emphatically a one sided &tf.tir. No accurate account of the speech for which Mr. O’Brien was arraigned exists, and the valiant orator was convicted through the testimony of incompetent witnesses. The absolute unfitness of the Government reporters was aptly illustrated in this instance. Sergeant Foley, one of the officers on whose deposition Mr. O'Brien was arrested, swore that he wrote the words of the speech from his memory. He had forgotten to take his notebook with him to the meeting, an 1 hence was obliged to rely on his mental capacity for the speech. And on the testimony of tnis presumably prejudiced man, Mr. O’Brien, was convicted. The majority of the police reporters are illiterate, and are wholly incapable of rendering a verbatim report of anything, much less a speech in which much of the language used was entirely beyond their mental caliber.