MERELY A MURDER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 77, 7 April 1910, Page 6

MERELY A MURDER.

POLICE CAPTAIN'S CRIME

"Conboy's got two men «m the jury. Sergeant Mogan told me that." So said one of the reporters on the "police beat" in San Francisco last week. He. was speaking of the jury that tried Police Captain Michael Joseph Con boy on the charge ■of murdering a youth, Bernard Lagan. At the time of this speech the jury was in retirement considering its verdict, and no one was supposed to Icnow what the result of the deliberation would be; but the police reporter knew. Next day it was an?nounced that the jury had disagreed; ten were for conviction and two for acquittal. The two had refused to give any reason to their fellow jurymen for their refusal to convict; they liad answered every argument with the one statement, "I vote to acquit." But there was not any scandal in the newspapers about the "plant" on the jury; everyone knew there was .ft "plant," and everyone knew equally well that it would be impossible to

bring to justice those responsible for it. Captain Conboy was himself so sure he would not be convicted that he would not even admit, while on the witness stand, that he had been ■drunk at the time he shot Lagan. By pleading drunkenness he could have assured himself against anything more than a manslaughter verdict ; but he knew that was not necessary. And besides, if he had admitted being intoxicated, it would have spoiled his chance of being reinstated in the police force, as he expects to be when his present little trouble has blown over. FAILURE TO CONVICT. The proof seemed so clear that Judge Dunne, one of the few honest judges in San Francisco, remarked in discharging the jury that any twelve honest men ought to have had no difficulty in reaching a verdict. The testimony of the prosecution was that Conboy was lying helplessly drunk on a sidewalk at 1.30 a.m. on 23rd June. The youth Lagan came up to assist him. The captain, who was in civilian dress, pushed Lagan away, shouting that he was a "pickpocket and a thief." He continued •to shout thus after Lagan, who was leaving him to avoid trouble; the boy became angry at the accusation and came back to the captain, who was now standing, supporting himself against a lamp-post. Lagan began pulling his coat off. Captain Conboy shot at him three times with a police revolver, and the last bullet inflicted a wound that resulted in death after months of suffering. I No defence was offered except this unsupported statement of Conboy's made in a plaintive tone; "Well, I thought he was going to kill me." It sounded so weak after the defendant's own evidence of the boy's pulling off his coat—that the crowd in the courtroom tittered; and up to that time no sign of hostility to Conboy had appeared.