" UNWRITTEN LAW."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 166, 13 July 1907, Page 13

" UNWRITTEN LAW."

JUDGE TEIED FOE MURDEK. Virginia and its "chivalrous" code of the unwritten law are again at the bar of public opinion, says a New York message of May 28, which is watching with intense and indignant interest the progress of the trial of Jndge W. G. Loving, who recently shot Mr Theodore Estes, a young and popular member of an aristocratic family, in the belief that he had betrayed his daughter. A man of powerful physiqne and violent passions, he seized a gun one day last month, and emptied both barrels of it upon the young man, who, he was informed, had drugged his daughter, Miss LJzzie Loving, while she was out driving in a buggy. The friends of the murdered man have published indignant denials of the crime laid to his charge. Miss Lizzie Loving, a handsome brunette, with dark, lustrous eyes, was staying at the country residence of Mr T. W. Kidd, an uncle of the Estes. She went out one night for a drive with young Mr Estes, and returned late in a condition of stupor. A doctor diagnosed the complaint as intoxication. Mr Eetes explained that she asked him tor a drink of whisky, as she had a headache, and since she was unaccustomed to stimulants the spirit went to her head. Several days afterwards Miss Lizzie Loving returned home. Her father immediately questioned her regarding the drive, and her answers filled him with such blind rage that he rushed out and shot Mr Estes like a dog. Judge Loving has since' made no public statement as to this summary act of vengeance, but the fact that he has engaged as counsel Mr "Jack" Lee, of Lynchburg, who successfully defended the ■Strothers brothers, who were charged with murdering Mr Bywaters, shows that he intends to invoke the "unwritten law." The brothers, it will be recalled, compelled Mr Bywaters to marry their dying, dishonoured sister, and then shot him. The case is complicated by the existence of a longstanding family feud between the Loving and Estes families. Huge crowds congregated at the courthouse at Covington, and their demeanour proves that public opinion is decidedly hostitle to Judge Loving, whose case rests entirely on the tale his daughter will tell the jury. What that tale will be no one yet knows. [Our cables have since informed us that a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned.] ___