1. Guilty of murder in the first degree, or
2. Guilty of murder in the second degree, or
3. Guilty of manslaughter, or
4. Not guilty.
"It is very desirable that you reach a verdict in this case. The law requires that your conclusion shall be unanimous. It is not required that any one of you should surrender his individual freedom of judgement, but it is well that each of you should have in mind that your true verdict cannot ordinarily be reached except by mutual consideration and discussion of all the different views that may suggest themselves to any of your number. The jury room is no place for pride of opinion. A verdict which is the result of real harmony, or that growing out of open-minded discussion between jurors, and a willingness to be convinced, with a proper regard for the opinions of others, and with a reasonable distrust of individual views not shared by their fellows, is a fair yielding of one reason to a stronger one; such, having in mind the great desirability of unanimity, is not open to criticism. The law contemplates that jurors shall, by their discussions, harmonize their views if possible, but not that they shall compromise and yield for the mere purpose of agreement. One should not surrender his conscientious convictions.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I commit the case to your hands. Listen to the arguments. Regardless of what may be counsel's recollection of testimony, you must take and follow your own recollection. You are not required to adopt any view which counsel may suggest in argument, but you should give close attention to all they say. Take up your task fearlessly, with but one single aim—to discharge the obligations of your oaths. You have no class to satisfy—simply the dictates of your own conscience."
Taken as a whole the instructions were distinctly unfavorable to the defendant, not because of any particular bias of the judge whose political ambitions might have made him desirous of establishing a record for fairness, but by reason of the fact that the law itself on the question of criminal conspiracy is archaic and absurd, being based upon precedents established when the use of electricity and steam power were unknown, when the stage coach was the fastest means of locomotion and the tallow dip the principal form of illumination. This law, like all other statute law, was created thru the desire of the ruling class to protect property, therefore it contained no element of justice when applied to the modern proletariat, the twentieth century worker stripped of everything but his power to labor.
Following the reading of the court's instructions prosecutor Black made his argument, Vanderveer and Moore for the defense addressing the jury in turn, and Cooley making the concluding plea for the state. This arrangement gave Veitch no chance to turn loose his oratorical fireworks, much to the chagrin of the gentleman who had been so kindly loaned to the prosecution by the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association.
Black's lengthy address was a whine for pity because of his youth and a prayer for relief from the dire straits and legal bankruptcy into which Snohomish County had fallen. It is summarized in the following:
"We are at the close of a great trial. A great deal of evidence has been introduced; practically two million five hundred words. From the standpoint of the attorneys who have tried this case the evidence has been very complicated because it had in it a great mass of evidence that was only remotely connected with the real issue at bar. You as jurors have a very simple question to decide in this case.