COURT IN TEARS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 January 1929, Page 7

COURT IN TEARS

MAN WHO SHOT SON ACQUITTED. NEW YORK, Nov. 23. Tears filled the eyes of the jury and welled up in those of the judge, the prosecutor hurst out crying, and the prisoner fainted as a verdict of not guilty in favour ol Arthur Falk, the confessed murdered of his own son, was returned at Chicago yesterday. Dickens could not have imagined stranger scenes than those which occurred in the grim old crimjnal courts /buildings when one of the shortest trials in American history came to an end amid a storm of weeping. The crime was a simple one and went unchallenged. Falk, in a drunken rage, had shot his son Eldrod. 22 years old, when the Iboy upbraided him for returning home so often intoxicated. The father had given his son a shotgun for Christmas. One evening three months ago the lad presented the gun to his father, saying, “Shoot me. for I would rather be dead than the son of a drunkard.” Pulling the trigger in his stupor, Fa.lk fired, and his son lay dead at his footWfFE AND DAUGHTER’S SUPPORT His wife and his 15) year old daughter Vermis at first turned bitterly against him, but a few days before the trial they declared their intention to stand by him. Against them in court were Messrs Harold Levy and Emmett Byrne, known throughout Chicngo as “the Hanging Prosecutors. The defence intimated that they would plead that Falk did not know what lie was doing. 'l'lic State called the i'laughtcr, Vermis, /as its chief witness. Relentlessly “the Hanging Prosecutors’' forced her to retail the incidents of the tragic evening. Fronting her, his face contorted with remorse and at his elbow the gun that caused the son’s death, sat her father. Behind sat her mother and grandmother, both in the deepest mourning. As the girl identified tfie weapon that caused her brother’s deatli she broke into a passionate fit of weeping in which she was joined by the crowded court of spectators and by several of the jury. Other witnesses were quickly disposed of, and Prosecutor Byrne rose to begin the closing argument that would firing the prisoner to the electric chair. Instead, be too burst out crying and, with tears streaming down bis face, said: “If this man is sent to tile electric chair or to the penitentiary I refuse to be a party to it. When I bad concluded my argument I could not look into the faces of his wife, daughter, or mother.” Now the whole courtroom was bath.cd in tears and Judge Normoyle was seen wiping bis eyes. Without further argument the case went to the juryj who brought in a verdict of not guilty in five minutes. “The verdict,” said the judge, “is a very sensible one. It is the onlj one that could have been returned in the c i rculnsta n ces. ’ ’ In the judge’s chambers Falk and his family were reunited, still too full of emotion to spoak.