Mr. Lockwood’s vigorous speech for the defence followed. It contained powerful appeals to the jury, and animated attacks upon the prosecution and the press; but it was an up-hill fight that the learned counsel was so gallantly waging.
He claimed to have utterly discredited Mrs. Dyson’s testimony, and urged that the jury could not send to execution any human being on such evidence as she had given.
The theory set up by him as to the actual occurrences at Bannercross on the night of the murder was, that Peace, finding himself pursued by Mr. Dyson, fired his revolver to frighten him from pursuit; but this not effecting its purpose, a struggle took place, and in that struggle the revolver went off accidentally, with fatal effects.
But unfortunately Mr. Lockwood had no testimony behind him to back up this ingenious attempt to reduce the crime to one of manslaughter; and the glamour of feeling in which he had sought to invest the case was quickly dispelled even in the breasts of the most sentimental in court when the learned judge, in a summing-up of a marked fairness and impartiality, placed the plain issues, and the unanswerable facts, about which there could be no question, before the twelve men on whose word the life of a human being hung.
His lordship, who began to speak at a quarter-past six, occupied fifty-five minutes.
The jury, who retired at ten minutes past seven, were absent fifteen minutes, and on their return the prisoner, who had been allowed to leave the dock, was brought back and replaced in his chair, looking limp and wretched.
The warders, who had hitherto sat beside him, now stood, one holding either arm. The Judge resumed his seat, and the jury immediately delivered their verdict of guilty.
Asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed, he replied very faintly, “It’s no use my saying anything.”
The learned Judge forthwith passed sentence in a few calm, matter-of-fact sentences. There was an utter absence of feeling in court.
The unhappy man heard the sentence with an apparent indifference, bred either of stoicism or despair, and the warders at once raised him to convey him from the dock.