Was Marshall Williams Sane When Deputy Sheriff Al Pate Was Shot? Oct. 11, 1921

Fayetteville, Oct. 10—With eminent alienists summoned by State and defense, the first phase of the fight for conviction or acquittal of J. Marshall Williams charged with the murder of Deputy Sheriff Al J. Pate will begin tomorrow afternoon before Judge H. Kerr in a special term of the Cumberland Superior court ordered by Governor Morrison. The question of Williams sanity will first come before the court for determination by a jury to be followed by the trial for murder in case the verdict goes against the defendant. Williams is a son of a former County Commissioner.

Indications are that the case will be one of the hardest fought and most intensely interesting in the legal history of the county with an array of counsel that includes the leaders of the bar of the upper Cape Fear section of the determination of the insanity issue will consume at least two or three days and the trial for murder, if it follows, will easily take up the remainder of the week and possibly run over into next week.

The empaneling of the jury that will decide the question of Williams’ mental competence will commence tomorrow afternoon, the time set by Judge Kerr when the case came up today. John G. Shaw, of the defense counsel, asked that it be taken up Tuesday morning while Solicitor S.D. McLean contended for Wednesday in order that he might dispose of the several other cases on the overloaded docket.

While there has never been any admission that Williams fired the shot that instantly killed Pate during a raid on a whiskey still near Godwin on July 22nd, it is thought that the defendant’s attorney will place their chief reliance on the plea of insanity and a hard fight along that line is being planned. Among the witnesses summoned by the defense are J. Allison Hodges of Richmond, and Col. E.S. Hodges of Richmond, and Col. E.S. Ligon of Blackstone Military Academy, Va., under whom Williams attended school. One of the defendant’s attorneys declared tonight that these and a large number of other witnesses will testify that Williams is not sane.

Other witnesses named by counsel to whom Williams had gone to school and who it was declared would give the same testimony are: W.R. Clegg, a lawyer of Carthage; Rev. W.A. Nicholson of Western; H.B. Gaston of Belmont; W.H. Moore, principal of the high school; Rev. A.S. Anderson of Morganton, former principal of the Westminister high school at Rutherfordton, and Rev. A.R. McQueen of Dunn. Other physicians who will appear as witnesses for the defense are Drs. F. Olive, J.K. McLean, K.G. Averett, and T.M. West.

From The Dunn Dispatch, Oct. 11, 1921

Jury Disagrees On Williams Sanity

By the Associated Press

Fayetteville, N.C., Oct. 17—After being out 45 hours the jury to determine whether J. Marshal Williams charged with the murder of Deputy L.J. Pate, is sane or insane, today reported to the clerk of Cumberland County court inability to reach a verdict, and a mistrial was ordered.

It was reported that 11 of the jurors held that Williams was sane.

Deputy Pate was killed on the night of July 2 when he and a party of officers raided a still near Godwin. Williams will be arraigned for murder.

From the front page of the Hickory Daily Record, Monday, Oct. 17, 1921