Mother Weeps and Thanks Jury When Son Is Acquitted. . . Young Brown Found Not Guilty and Demonstration Narrowly Avoided. . . More Eloquence in Both Sides of Case. . . Hard Fought Battle Which Attracted Widespread Attention Especially of Women in City, Came to End Yesterday Afternoon
A great feeling of relief swept over the hundreds of men and women packed in the court room clear up to the bar when the foreman of the jury yesterday pronounced the magic words, “Not Guilty!” and Howard Brown could again go out in the world a free youth. That was what they had come to see and that’s what they saw. There was rustle. They were about to make another demonstration, but Sheriff Grant, after yesterday’s tempestuous scene, was on the look out, lifted his hand, and shouted for order before it had begun.
But he could not prevent Mrs. Brown from bursting into tears, throwing both arms around her son, and in her joy rushing up and almost embracing the jurors. Perhaps neither he nor Judge Allen thought of preventing it. It was all over—the waiting, the anxiety, the storm, the eloquence, the hope, the fear, and all that had followed the trial through nearly three days of dramatic suspense, all were gone. So was Albert Beshara’s brother, who sat just behind the prosecution through the trial. He vanished in a moment and only the pleased citizenship who had come out to see Brown’s acquittal and who had shown where they stood from the first, remained to shake hands and to congratulate. Among them were many of Howard’s school chums.
And so ended a Wayne county murder trial that had gone through two and a half nerve-racking days for the public, and which had attracted more attention, and been favored with more public opinion, it is declared by responsible citizens, than any in years. A hundred women of the W.C.T.U. and the Women’s Federation have been in court throughout the two days and a half.
Events moved tensely yesterday. Judge W.S. O’B. Robinson spoke, Col J.D. Langston, and Solicitor Siler, Judge Allen charged the jury about noon,
the jury retired, and the court adjourned until 2 o’clock. It had been convened at 9 o’clock this morning, a half hour earlier than the preceding mornings.
Judge Allen Disagrees
In charging the jury Judge Oliver H. Allen disagreed with Solicitor Siler’s opinion on the influence of the fine oratory on the court and his disagreed with Judge Robinson’s interpretation of the law on manslaughter, which the latter had read to the jury in his speech. Judge Allen said he believed the eloquence of the bar had done as much to promote the spirit of liberty as any other thing he knew of. “Enough cannot be said about the love of the home, the protection of home and mother,” he declared, and while one should not be swayed, the effect was good, he added. He believed too, that there was no danger of tearing down the temple of justice by listening to such things as the prosecution had intimated, and advised the jury to render such a verdict as they thought proper under the circumstances.
Rehearses the Evidence
The substance of the evidence he said, was the prisoner found the deceased in his house, or his father’s house, heard or said he heard an outcry from his mother, went in the house and found her saying, “He’s taken advantage of me,” got his gun and pursued the deceased, or rather followed him. There was some kind of encounter at the store, according to the Judge’s recollection, where the prisoner shot the deceased, but he advised the jurors to take it “according to their recollection.”
Judge Allen then read the defendant’s complete statement published yesterday. He told the jurors that the law was that the defendant could testify in his own behalf, but that it was the jury’s duty to scrutinize his evidence closely to see if he was telling the truth, and if they believed he was, to accept his evidence as that of any other witness.
It was the contention of the state, said the judge, that the defendant got his gun and pursued the deceased for the purpose of killing him. It was their duty to find the facts from the evidence. “Did the prisoner pursue the deceased with the intention or purpose of killing him or only to get an explanation as he says? Did the deceased seize the prisoner and did the prisoner think he was in danger of great bodily harm?”
Four Possible Findings
“There are four phases in this case, murder, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, or you can find him not guilty,” Judge Allen told the jury. “If the state has satisfied you the killing was willful and malicious then it is murder in the first degree.” The use of a deadly weapon presumes malice when there are no other circumstances, Judge Allen charged the jury.
“Where the assailant provokes the difficulty and kills even to protect his own life, he is guilty of manslaughter,” he charged them. “The question for you to decide is whether the prisoner brought on the difficulty or was merely seeking an explanation.”
The law about husbands read to the jury by Judge Robinson, Judge Allen said did not apply to the child. He did believe under the law though the child, the prisoner, had the right to drive the deceased away but not to follow him up.
“But,” he concluded, “if the jury believed that he did follow to get an explanation from the deceased and was attacked by the deceased and was in fear of great bodily harm or death, he did have a right to shoot and to shoot to kill. In that case,” he declared, “the verdict would be ‘Not Guilty.’”
Judge Robinson Speaks
Judge Robinson opened the argument for the state when court convened. He argued that it was not a question of being a foreigner, that we were all foreigners at one time, that he himself was of Irish descent, but was as good an American as anybody. He took the law books and dwelt on the law of 1856 from the Supreme court, declaring that a man who kills another in the act of adultery with his wife is guilty of at least manslaughter. He further dwelt on the sacredness of the law as the accumulated wisdom of the ages.
At times Judge Robinson became aroused and full of fire. At others he spoke so low that only the jury could fully understand what he was saying although the court listened tensely, for the spectators wanted to hear all that was said by the man they believed the principal prosecutor.
Col. Langston’s Address
It remained for Col. J.D. Langston to bring back the elemental fire and enthusiasm of Major Matt Allen’s address of the preceding evening, in his illustration of the Oriental passion and debauchery of 2,000 years which he said Albert Beshara brought to this country in his veins.
He began quietly, sympathizing with the jury for having to sit so long. Soon he was after the law Judge Robinson had quoted. He said Judge Robinson had gone back to a decision of the Supreme court in 1856 and quoted a decision from a day when a man had a right under the law to whip h
is wife all he pleased if he did not use a switch larger than his finger.
“Judge Robinson has said he was guilty of murder, and yet the judge has said if Howard Brown had killed Beshara when he ran him out of the house all the gold between here and hell could not have gotten him to appear for him. There is, gentlemen, a stronger law than that on the books
and that it the law of stern necessity.”
“They tell us that all men are human, and that we should treat them accordingly. But there is no need in thinking that because we associate with one another, because people and races meet and mingle together in business, they are all the same. There are men and there are beasts. Beshara was a beast.
The Drama of Life
“Let me picture to you the great drama of life. Here we have the hard working woman and her devoted son. And we have got to have the villain. In this case it was Beshara. But it doesn’t make any difference whether it was Beshara, Ben Abou Hamid, or who. It is the same. But here we have Beshara! Representative of the Orient. Lustful, Passionate. Then men and women of America, and lawyers. They are the puppets. Lawyers come and go, but law, virtue, and sacredness stay.
“Go back 2,000 years to Asia Minor to those Turkish scenes of Oriental debauchery, their harems, their slave women, their lustfulness, their passion, and you have it. They have come down from 2,000 years of debauched womanhood They have seen the Turks do it, and it is in them. I have nothing against the individual who would lift up himself. But can you stifle the inheritance of 2,000 years? The Christian nations long since should have gone in and cleaned them up so America wouldn’t be the dumping ground of their Oriental morals and passions.
“Did you ever see a tree transplanted? Did you ever see a lemon tree transplanted from a tropical climate? It becomes a dwarf, but it is a lemon still. The acid is still there, only more intensified.
Southern Sentiment
“We have given 150 years of the best that is in us that we may have a South where the men love their women. And that’s where Beshara landed. That’s where Beshara was transplanted. In a citizenship where all look on their women as our fathers who fought at Gettysburg and where we will protect them with our lives.
“And so the Drama moves on to Goldsboro.
“Who was Beshara? Go down the street with me and watch Beshara. Let’s watch that king of libertines. Sleek eyed, polished. Supposed to be a salesman. No! Don’t you see him watching the girls go by, a cunning smile on his face. Watching our girls, our American girls! With his lustful, Oriental passion. Can’t you see now? He turns to a companion, ‘Jabber, jabber, jabber, jabber, and then laugh!
“Did you ever stand close beside him and want to knock his block off? That’s Beshara. Beshara the libertine.”
And Col. Langston turned dramatically toward Beshara’s brother sitting behind the prosecution. “Quit your gazing, quit your feasting your glittering eyes on our women.
“To them, working women are a prey. Beshara saw this woman pass. What thoughts were in Beshara’s mind? What was he thinking as he followed this woman? What was he thinking as he went in her room and locked the door? Was he thinking of committing rape? I don’t think so. He probably didn’t think it would be necessary. He couldn’t see why he couldn’t go home with any woman. He didn’t understand us or our way.”
Refers to Judge Robinson
He paused here long enough to refer to Judge Robinson and the “Great Irish Spirit,” which rose up and, declared, “When you forget mother may God forget us.” And he plead with young Brown to go back home and “forget all the nonsense the prosecution had suggested about his mother for which they have not offered one particle of evidence.” He then went after the prosecution for wanting to put Mrs. Brown on the stand as marks for “their poison venom.”
From here he described the scene in the house and spoke touchingly of Howard coming home; then doing the best he could—a 17-year-old boy. Col. Langston talked of the difference between a boy and a man, declaring he or any other man would have killed Beshara on the spot, but how it was so natural for a boy to be baffled, amazed, puzzled and want an explanation.
He concluded by saying that if the jury convicted Brown on the evidence in the case then the medical profession needed to rewrite the books and to indicate they were men of milk and water that if they did what Judge Robinson advised them to do they were not red-blooded men like Judge Robinson.
Solicitor Siler Concluded
Solicitor Siler in concluding the evidence for the state made what was declared by many of his colleagues and brother attorneys one of his best speeches. He belittled Col. Langston’s Oriental illustrations; spoke of Syria and the place where he said the few remaining copies of the Bible were protected while they were all being destroyed in other parts of the world; and the East as being civilized while he and his opponent’s ancestors were wild cave men.
He reviewed the evidence and spoke of the sacred rights of the state of North Carolina. And despite the fact the vast audience was out of sympathy with his case and believed he had a bad case. They tittered at his satire and clever epigrams.
The case was turned over to the jury at 1 o’clock and after a recess they returned a verdict at 2 o’clock.
From the Goldsboro News, August 27, 1922
