Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1894 — John Paris’ Hard Sentence. [ARTICLE]

John Paris’ Hard Sentence.

The trial of John W. Paris, president of the failed Greentown bank, was concluded at Frankfort, last Thursday. The result was a conviction and the surprisingly severe sentence of six years imprisonment and a fine of SIOOO. The following regarding the final incidents of the trial is copied from the Indianapolis Journal, of last Friday, being a special dispatch from Frankfort: The jury in the Greentown bank bad been out only about an hour this afternoon when it returned the following verdict: “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of false pretenses and affix the penalty at six years in the State’s prison and a fine of $1000.” Mr. Paris received the sentence with a slight smile and not for a second aid the remarkable coolness which has marked his course during the trial desert him. His wife,-who has been constantly by his side during the trial, bore up bravely, but it was plain to be seen that her heart was breaking. After the jury had been polled. Attorney Bayless filed a motion for a new trial, which will be argued next Monday, pending which defendant was leleased on his old bond, which is $3,000. The conviction on false pretenses was a great surprise to Mr. Paris and his attorneys, as well as to everybody B else. There was little direct evidence to support this count of the indictment and if a conviction was reached at all, it was expected to be for embezzlement. It required but two ballots to decide the question of guilt, the first being 11 to 1. On the first ballott for the penalty one juryman favored the limit, seven years. The principal thing on which a new trial will be asked is that the evidence fails to sustain the verdict. Paris and his attorneys are hopeful that Judge Kent will set the verdict aside and the attorneys are very confident that if it becomes necessary to take the case to the Supreme Court it will be promptly reversed.

This is indeed a terribly severe sentence, in fact we cannot but think it is entirely too severe. Mr. Paris’s banking methods may have been irregular, unsafe, and perhaps even reprehensibly reckless, but we do not believe he was ever intentionally a criminal. That the public good required he should receive some punishment for his banking methods, it may possibly be, but that the punishment should be so overwhelmingly severe, we can not believe. Mr. Paris was raised in the vicinity of Rensselaer, and here his parents still reside. His father, being one of our most universally respected citizens. Mr. Paris is 34 years old. He is married and has three children. To his wife, of all others, his conviction was a terrible blow, and at last accounts she was in a serious condition from nervous prostration, on account of it. The arguments for a new trial will come up at Frankfort today. That a new trial will be granted we believe is very probable, from the fact that the evidence, weak as it was on the point of embezzlement and upon which he was not convicted, was still weaker on the point of false pretenses, on which the conviction was based. We have it on good authority that the Judge who tried the case does not think the evidence justified conviction.