Assistant State's Attorneys Day and Rittenhouse were outgeneraled, outclassed and whipped, and wanted to throw the blame for the acquittal of Dora McDonald on the Police Department and failed. They did everything but try the case.
Strong Defense by Lewis.
Colonel Lewis said that the State had not denied that the revolver with which Guerin was shot was his own. He called for the weapon and showed the jury how Guerin might have shot himself if Mrs. McDonald, in her struggle with him, had merely pushed the revolver around in the palm of his hand.
Again he called for the blood-stained coat that Guerin wore when he was killed. It was too good an opportunity to be overlooked by the fine dramatic eye of the Colonel.
"You remember the speech of Mark Anthony," he said; "how he produced a tremendous effect with the robe of the great Cæsar? I will not ask for more than the robe that this Cæsar wore."
Thereupon he spread out the grewsome relic on the railing on the jury box to show what he said were powder marks. In his mind, there was no doubt about how the tragedy worked out. Guerin, enraged and terrified when Mrs. McDonald told him that she had told her rich and influential husband everything, attacked her. He got the revolver out of his drawer, probably to frighten her. Mrs. McDonald, half choked, saw it gleam and pushed it away from her.
Strikes Hard at Archie Guerin.
More striking than the beautiful imageries and the wealth of quotation from ancient and modern authors with which the Colonel embellished his speech was his strong play upon "that fifteen minutes," which, according to his interpretation of the evidence, elapsed between the time the boys in Guerin's studio were ejected and the time when Archie came out, leaving his brother and Mrs. McDonald alone, behind locked doors.
"There need be nothing else in this case for you," exclaimed the speaker, "than this fifteen minutes unaccounted for. Archie Guerin knew what was going on there, and before God he should tell, but he did not. He hurried away and cleared the corridors. Nervous and confused, he hunted up Harry Feldman in the Windsor-Clifton Hotel, so that if anything happened, he could say: