THE STAR ROUTE FRAUDS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3791, 8 September 1883, Page 4

THE STAR ROUTE FRAUDS.

Of this great American trial, the correspondent of a contemporary writes: —This momorable trial, after lasting seven months, has ended in the acquittal of all tho accused. The two principal defendants, Brady and Dorsey, had been respectively Assistant-Postmaster-General and a senator of tho United States, and wore indicted with a number of others for conspiring to defraud the Government. There is no doubt of their having gained, under suspicious circumstances, nearly §2,000,000 from contracts for conveying the mails. At one trial, which lasted nearly five months, the minor culprits were convicted, but, as has since been shown, in consequence of bribery, threo of the jury iei:'used to agree to a verdict of guilty against the principal delinquents. At this second trial the Government exhausted every effort to secure a conviction. The proceedings involved the utterance of 4,000,000 words. The sum-ming-up for the defendants and the prosecution lasted two months, and consisted of seven speeches, averaging a little over a week each. After the jury went out, one of their number, who had been drinking heavily all through the trial, was thrown into delirium by being deprived, while in the strict custody of the Court, of the accustomed stimulus. He had to be dosed into a deliberating frame of mind by brandy, and if the jury had found the accused guilty, this •would probably have vitiated the verdict. But after 30 hours of debate the jury found a verdict of not guilty in favor of all the defendants, and thus this tedious prosecution, after two trials, lasting over a year, and costing Gso,oodols in legal expenses to to the Government, has reached simply the result of conspicuously acquitting men whom nine-tenths of the American people believe to be guilty. The journals which first exposed the Star route frauds still call tho accused "thoives," and challenge them to brinjr suits for libel. The old law at Washington does not allow of any special juries, and so the Government was compelled to accept men who were notoriously unfit to pass judgment upon such a case. Two of them were colored waiters, two were laborers, one was a bartender. At about the third month of tho trial, a juror astonished tho Court by publicly asking to be informed as to tho meaning of the word "plaintiff." It is to the unt'ortuate stupidity and ignorance on the part of the jury that the prosecution attribute their defeat. But tho people at largo will certainly hold the Administration responsible for this miscarriage of justice. The lawyers for the prosecution wore paid so much per diem, instead of tho usual lump sum, and the tcdiousness of tho proceedings is popularly ascribed to that cause.