By Jule B. Warren
Raleigh, Sept. 24—Sensational evidence impeaching the character of Rev. Livingston T. Mayes, corresponding secretary of the Southern Baptist convention and in partial charge of the Assembly work at Ridgecrest, Buncombe County, was developed and presented to the Governor by Judge Frank Carter, attorney, seeking a commutation of the sentence of J.T. Harris, Ridgecrest merchant, who is under death sentence for killing W.H. Monnish, wealthy Baptist philanthropist and summer tourist on September 3, 1920. The minister was the star witness in the case against Harris, and according to the contention of Judge Carter, Ex-Governor Locke Craige and Judge Thomas A. Jones, attorneys for Harris, furnished the evidence without which the jury would never have decided Harris was guilty of first degree murder.
The contention of the attorneys for Harris is that, in the light of newly discovered evidence about the star witness, his evidence is not worthy of belief, and that without this evidence it would not have been possible to have convicted their client.
The hearing started at 11 o’clock and Judge Carter spoke until 1:30, the remainder of the time before recess for lunch being taken up with questioning by the Governor, and the presentation of the executive views of the case. Judge Carter briefly told of the killing, showing that Harris killed the man and then came out of the cornfield from which he had shot, and turning his gun over to someone said:
“I have killed him, I have killed him.”
He told of the trial, going very briefly into details, until he came to the evidence of the Baptist minister, who testified of four essential points, which colored the whole trial and which testimony was used by the attorneys against Harris to secure the conviction.
FOUR POINTS
The four points made by the witness Mayes which were not corroborated by any other witness were as follows:
--Mayes reached Monnish five minutes after he was shot, and testified that during one conscious moment, he whispered in his ear the one word, “moonshine,” tending to show that Monnish died because of his enmity to the moonshiners, to whom it was intimated that Harris was selling supplies.
--That the shots fired at Monnish ranged upwards, tending to show that Harris fired at him after he was down and that there were various sized bullets.
--That Harris told told the preacher while on the train going to Asheville to surrender that he did not take a drink of whiskey before he shot Monnish “because he wanted to be himself for such an act,” but that he did take a little drink after he killed the man, tending to show premeditation and sanity.
--That Harris told him (Mayes) that he was going to depend on “Paul” his son, Paul Harris, to furnish the evidence which would clear him.
HARD TO TRACE
Judge Carter read the stenographic reports of the speech made by Mark Brown, attorney for the prosecution, showing the stress he laid upon this testimony of this “holy man of God” calling the attention of the Governor to the fact that indicated that prosecution itself felt this a crucial part of the testimony.
Then Judge Carter launched into his impeachment of this witness. He admitted that his associates in the trial did not believe all the preacher was testifying to in the court, but that they had no way at that time to impeach the testimony. He was a minister and had influence with the good country people on the jury, who looked up to him. He had not lived in North Carolina very long, and it was impossible to get evidence proving his character was other than what a minister’s should be.
After the trial Judge Carter said that he unexpectedly ran across some evidence which confirmed his belief that Mayes could not be relied on. He made an effort to find out something about the man, and discovered that he was born in Texas, and had one time been consul to some Canadian point, but had later been allowed to resign, according to information obtained in Washington. In an effort to get at the story of Mayes, Judge carter had gone to New York, looked into the secret archives of the Department of Justice in Washington, had gone to Thomasville, Georgia, where Mayes had been pastor, had secured affidavits from New Decatur, Alabama, where he had held another pastorate, from Little Rock, where he had lived awhile and from Ocean Grove, California, where a former personnel officer of the War Y, who knew Mayes, is now living.
ALL SAY UNRELIABLE
From all of these sources Judge Carter had secured affidavits and letters which declared that the star witness against Harris was utterly unreliable. From Thomasville, Georgia, where Mayes had been pastor of the First Baptist Church, came an affidavit from a deacon of the church which declared that Mayes got out of Thomasville because of his improper attention to the women members of his own congregation and his visits to houses of lewd women. This affidavit declared that Mayes ought not to be believed on his oath.
From New Decatur, Alabama, where Mayes next held a pastorate, came letters telling of his seditious utterances against the government, his circulation of letters saying Germany was justified in sinking the Lusitania and in using poison gas because France used it first, and of his general opposition to all war work, and to everything which President Wilson did.
From the secret archives of the secret service in Washington came evidence which Judge Carter was not allowed to disclose, except to the Governor, but which he declared related to complaints about his treasonable utterances and obstructions of recruiting work in Decatur. And the War Department also had some record of this man, for when he was run out of New Decatur, according to Judge Carter, Mayes tried to join the War Y workers, and was kicked out of this service because of his seditious utterances and work among the soldiers at Camp Pike.
Ocean Grove, California, furnished a letter from J.H. Kirkpatrick, former personnel officer for the Y., who made an investigation of Mayes’ record during the war, and found that he was dismissed because of “defective character,” and who said his investigation showed him that Mayes was a notorious liar, dishonest in money matters, and immoral. And there were also a host of affidavits from Eldorado, Arizona, where the man had held a pastorate, which also told of his bad character and of the trouble he had with the congregation before he resigned.
MONNISH NOT TEE-TOTLER
In addition to these affidavits Judge Carter presented two which he said he regretted the necessity of presenting, for they related to the character of the dead man. The suggestion going through the whole trial was that Monnish had died a martyr to his fight against moonshiners, that he was unutterably and unalterably opposed to whiskey in any form.
One of the affidavits came from L.E. Sigman of Black Mountain, who said that he had been invited to Mr. Monnish’s summer home for a drink of whiskey on several occasions. He knew that Monnish was not the enemy of whiskey the minister indicated in his testimony at the trial. the other affidavit was to the same effect. It came from C.M. Gilbert of Black Mountain, who said that Monnish had taken a number of drinks of whiskey with him, and that on one or more occasions he had seen Monnish “tanked or tight.”
Monnish had told him one time that he thought he would move to the mountains for the remainder of his life “because he liked to drink, and he believed he could get it longer in the mountains than in any other place.”
There was no attack on the character of Mr. Monnish, but only the introduction of these affidavits to break down the suggestion of Mayes that he was a tee-totler.
SEE JUDGE LONG
Following the close of the impassioned argument by Judge Carter, Governor Morrison indicated that he did not believe the evidence that one witness was a liar—and he thought the judge had made out a pretty good case against Mayes—was sufficient reason for changing the judgment of the court, especially when the judge who tried the case, Judge Ben F. Long, and the solicitor, Ed Swain, had made no recommendation. He suggested that the attorneys present this newly discovered evidence to the judge and solicitor and see what they thought about it.
Governor Morrison believed the presumption should be that the courts were right, and the fact that there were dissenting opinions did not change the legal record of the case. The jury had found the man guilty, and he was not yet inclined to believe that it would not have found him guilty if the testimony of Mayes had been eliminated. He could not get around the fact that Harris had shot the man down in the road in a manner that almost amounted to an assassination and had never made any explanation of the killing.
Hearing of the case is being continued.
From the front page of the Charlotte News, Saturday, Sept. 24, 1921
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