Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — QUEER VERDICTS. [ARTICLE]

QUEER VERDICTS.

The duties of those who serve on coroners’ juries do not ordinarily suggest anything very funny, and yet some laughable results come from their work, particularly if they do not exactly understand what is expected of them. An amusing story is told of a verdict brought in by a Western jury impaneled to inquire into, the cause of the death of a man supposed to have committed suicide. The verdict was brief and to the point, the foreman saying simply: “We, the jury, find the deceased guilty as charged.” Another jujy examined a great many witnesses in the ease of a man run over by a railroad engine. The verdict was: J ‘We find him to have come to his death by being cut in two by a railraod engine, whereby he could not breathe, hence he choked to death.” A coroner’s jury in the backwoods of Missouri heard all the evidence in the case of rs map killed by a runaway team, and brought in the following verdict: “The jury finds the dead deceased to have come to his death at the hands of a runaway team, the horses thereof being blameless, they being frightened by a dog.” ‘ It is told of an old German that he sat stolidly and stupidly on a coroner’s jury and listened to all the evidence, after which he walked over tow'ard the corpe with some degree of curiosity. Lifting the cloth he started back, turned to the other jurymen in amazement and affright, and cried out: “Mine Gott, shentlemen, dot man ish dead.” A jury in a Missouri rural community deliberated threfe hoors over the corpse of a woman burned by the explosion of a kerosene lamp. The following verdict was then announced^in writing: “Resolved, That the diszeased was burnt to deth. The joory.” A man, supposed to be a tramp, was found dead in the woods, out West. A jury inquired into the cause of his death, and reported as follows: “The jury does not find that the dead man has been foully dealt with, and is of the opinion that he died simply because his time had come and there was no getting out oHfc”