Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1897 — APPEAL IS REFUSED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

APPEAL IS REFUSED.

Ex-Banker Spalding’s Motion tor New Trial Is Denied. 1. ' Charles Warren Spalding, president and charged wrecker of the defunct Globe Savings Bank of Chicago, was sentenced by Judge Horton to the Joliet penitentiary under the provisions of the indeterminate imprisonment act. For the crime of embezzlement, of which the banker stands convicted, the extreme penalty is fifteen' years, which may be shortened three years by good time, and has always, after tie first year, the possibility of pardon by the prison commissioners. When Judge Horton had finished reading his opinion he asked the ex-banker if he had anything to say as to why sentence

should not be passed upon him. Spalding aToee and after standing fully a minute before the bar of justice saids “Your honor, a great injustice has been done me. lam proud of my business record in this city for the past thirty-three years. I yet maintain that not one cent of this money has ever been personal gain for me. I challenge any man in the city of Chicago or elsewhere to designate one instance when I did not honestly perform my duty. If you had permitted, Judge Horton, the testimony which twice acquitted me to be heard by the jury which sat before you in my last trial, I would have been freed on this charge as on the others* but you didn’t and I stand convicted of a terrible crime. I am not guilty, but humbly accept my sentence. That is all.” In arriving at his opinion Judge Horton cited many cases, and although it was set forth in Spalding’s last trial! that there was no intention on the part of the accused of appropriating the money to his own use, he held this was no excuse. The prisoner had admitted during the trial that he had deposited with the First National Bank Macoupin County bonds belonging to the University of Illinois as security for his own personal check. The court held that when Spalding, who was at this time treasurer of the University of Illinois, took these bonds he became debtor to the university for this amount. His failure to produce them when called upon mnde him an embezzler, and therefore subjected him to the full penalty of the law. Inasmuch as the money was secured on the bonds given as security, the embezzlement was plain to the court, and his decision was in accordance with the admission of Spalding himself.

CHAS. W. SPALDING.