Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1905 — Donahue Soon Went Free. [ARTICLE]

Donahue Soon Went Free.

W. B. Donahue did not remain long • in the custody of the officers of the law. Mrs. Sarah A. Brown, his landlady came down to the jail and counted out $25 and upon receipt thereof Donahue was released, by direction of the parties who caused his arrest. It seems by their story that he drew a check on a North Dakota bank for $25 and that a Medaryville man named Van Buskirk endorsed it. The check was cashed here, and sent to the Dakota bank for collection, and came protested with no funds in the bank on which it was drawn. Van Buskirk the endorser, was held for it, and he caused Donahue’s arrest, and having got his money back, it seems that he did not care to press the prosecution. And that leads us to remark that there is something altogether wrong in this proceeding, which looks to us like an outrageous trifling with the law. If Donahue was not guilty of a crime.it was an outrage to arrest him; if he was guilty it was an outrage to release him without a prosecution. Moreover this is the second instance of thus trifling with the criminal law which has lately come to our notice from Pulaski county. The other case was when a woman member of a traveling gang of horse-trading and fortune telling cheats was arrested at Fair Oaks and taken back to Winamac, oq a charge of swindling a poor working girl out of all her hard earned savings. In this ease also the doubtless guilty party paid up and* was released with a license to go and rob other poor people. It is a crime under the law to compound with crime in this manner, or to use the criminal law to collect debts, and those Pulaski county officials ought to .be taught a lesson.