Judge Lyon Did Right, Says John Livingstone, Sept. 20, 1921

The People’s Forum. . . Says Judge Lyon Did Right

To the Editor:

Judge C.C. Lyon of Elizabethtown needs no defense at my hands or anyone else. His life has been an open book. His career as judge, now nearing a close, has been one of honor to himself and to the State whom he has served faithfully and well.

No man on the bench in North Carolina possesses sounder judgment than he. He has that indefinable quality which we usually call “horse sense.” He acts from conviction and his convictions are based upon a fair regard for all the facts.

It is my belief that Judge Lyon has done no greater service than when he had the courage to set aside a verdict of guilty in the Hightower and Massey cases. He stated his reason for doing so concisely.

Had the conviction been allowed to stand, the attention of the public would have been diverted from the main issue in the case, which was the wrecking of a bank in Raleigh right under the nose of the Corporation Commission and the corps of State bank examiners, whose business supposedly is to prevent the thing that Hightower and Massey are charged with doing.

Considerable fireworks had been set off by the prosecution and every effort made to divert attention from the main issue involved. It is true that the Solicitor attempted to justify his action by saying that the law against embezzlement is so weak that he dared not try to prosecute under it. This was such a lame excuse that nobody took it seriously.

It is unjust to Judge Lyon to say that his action “will certainly offer little encouragement to Solicitors whose dockets contain cases.” On the contrary it will be a strong incentive for Solicitors to face the main issue in bank cases instead of using the law as a cloak with which to work a manifest injustice, if they can secure a jury that will follow their wishes.

Judge Lyon is not in the habit of setting aside verdicts. He usually lets them stand. Neither is he in the habit of being led astray by a flare of horns and much trumpeting by Solicitors who lack the thickness of skin to stand to the rack and do their level best to secure justice even though it brings bitter criticism. I have long been an admirer of Judge Lyon and I honor him for his exhibition of courage and good sense, not because of any personal feeling for or against those tried, but because I feel the question of bank wrecking should be fought out fairly and squarely instead of trying to make somebody the goat.

--John A. Livingstone, Raleigh, N.C.

From the editorial page of The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Wednesday, Sept. 20, 1922