This extraordinary case will long be remembered. The libels published and circulated by Mr. Branch were the most outrageous ever perpetrated in this city, and the prosecution has been in keeping with the provocation, amounting in its virulence almost to a persecution. Circumstances on the trial favored the presumption that the whole of the proceedings had been decided upon in advance, even to the wording of the recorder’s charge and sentence. His honor himself informed the counsel for the prisoner that he had considered his possible application for a suspension of judgment, had examined the point, and had made up his mind that such a motion could not be allowed. Every precaution had been taken. The whole power of the corporation—executive, legal, judicial—was invoked to annihilate Mr. Branch, and the end was attained. The offence was outrageous, and will admit of no palliation; but it was hardly good taste in the powerful complainants to take every advantage of a criminal whom many believe to be a monomaniac, and by the extreme vindicativeness of the prosecution, give to the administration of public justice the appearance of private revenge.
The arguments in the case were worthy of the best days of the criminal bar of New York. Mr. Ashmead distinguished himself highly in his appeal for the prisoner, and had the case gone to the jury before the cool and dispassionate reasoning of Mr. McKeon had partially weakened the effect of Mr. Ashmead’s eloquence, the result might have been different. The charge of the Recorder was decidedly against the prisoner, and his sentence, it will be seen, was severe in its terms to an excess that was not called for. The punishment imposed was the extent of the law, and was by no means disproportioned to the offence; but it was entirely gratuitous on the part of the Recorder to drag into his remarks matters extraneous to the issue, and not at all connected with the present trial. The Recorder’s announcement of the rod he has in pickle for certain other libellers who he intimates are shortly to be tried, will probably put those prospective culprits upon their guard, and they will at least have this advantage over Mr. Branch that they will not be taken unawares.
We congratulate the distinguished citizens whose characters have been cleared again by this conviction of Mr. Branch; but can assure them that their fair fame by no means suffered so much from the attacks of the “Alligator” as they presumed that it did.
We understand that Mr. Ashmead will to-day prepare a bill of exceptions, and move in the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari and stay of proceedings. The bill will not be settled until late in the day, and the motion in the Supreme Court cannot be made until to-morrow. In case, therefore, that Mr. Branch should be sent to Penitentiary to-day, the motion will not avail him. It is hardly to be presumed that when a motion for arrest of judgment was denied without argument, the prisoner will be allowed time to benefit by an appeal to the Supreme Court.
[From the N. Y. Tribune.]
Stephen H. Branch was yesterday convicted of a gross libel on Mayor Tiemann and others, and sentenced by the Recorder to the Penitentiary for one year, and to pay a fine of $250. Considering that the libel, however groundless essentially, appears to have had a real foundation in statements made to Branch by persons whom he undoubtedly believed, and whom his counsel had ready to produce (but their testimony was not allowed), we must consider this sentence a severe one. We believe it will excite for him a sympathy which it is unwise to provoke. Branch, we believe, has been trying pretty hard to libel us in his abusive little sheet; but we have never considered his slanders worth any sort of notice. It may be well to stop his career, but not to make him a martyr. And we say most decidedly, that considering the libel for which he was indicted was really based on information furnished him by persons whom he had reason to believe, we deem his sentence a harsh one, and trust it may be mitigated by pardon.
[From the New York Times.]
The verdict and the sentence startled a great many people. Branch was immediately surrounded by a troop of friends, who nearly shook his hands off with their greetings. He was followed to the Tombs by a large crowd, who only left him at the gates of that edifice. But though incarcerated in prison, we have not as Branch says, heard the last of Branch.
