FRENCH PLEADER.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XLV, Issue 6135, 7 February 1914, Page 4

FRENCH PLEADER.

With the whole court, including the jury, counsel, and the prisoner in tears, Mme. Poeckes was on December 3 acquitted on the murder of her husband, whom she was accused of having shot, tier counsel made an impassioned speech. He defended her from the charge of cynical indifference. She was frozen with grief, he declared. "There was some flowers," he added, "which open only at twilight, but they are none the less sweet tor that." Depicting the grief which would have afflicted the dead man had he known that his wife would be charged with his death and the ahame which would be the heritage of the prisoner's two young children were she condemned, he concluded with the words, "1 beg for mercy in the name of the two babesmercy in the name of the cradle." This stilling harangue successfully swayed the minds of the jury.