Witness Objects to Questions About Lies, Sept. 19, 1925

Witness Causes Row in Court in Raleigh. . . W.P. Massey in Answer to Question Regarding Domestic Relations Says “It’s a Lie”

By Tom Bost

Greensboro News

Raleigh, Sept. 18—“that’s a damned lie,” snapped W.P. Massey, former surveyor of Wake County, this afternoon when Solicitor W.F. Evans, who was cross examining him as a witness for two young defendants, asked the high spirited farmer an impeaching question about his own treatment of his wife.

The farmer was in mood for any fate. He more than snapped his reply to the solicitor; he poured out his contempt for that style of imputation. Judge Garland A. Midyette reprimanded the witness and told him that the courts could not allow that kind of conduct. The very next question of the solicitor relating to the farmer’s domestic life was met with “That’s another lie.”

At this juncture the representative of the peace and dignity of the state rose and asked Judge Midyette to retire the jury. The judge again reprimanded the former surveyor who was in a rage but was holding himself down pretty well. “You can send me to jail,’ said Mr. Massey. “I would rather lie in there than be insulted this way.” Mr. Evans got the jury out and advised the court that never before had the solicitor been called a damned liar. Josiah Bailey, who was appearing for the defendants, Bud Fowler and Russell Wathers, charged with assault with deadly weapons, observed that the defense witness had not called the solicitor a damned liar, but had branded the impeachment of the solicitor as such. “And the solicitor is bound by his answer,” Mr. Bailey said. It was pretty hard lines for the prosecuting officer who proved with such vehemence and by a hostile witness, the furious falsity of the accusation.

Judge Midyette took the defense’s view that the attack of Mr. Massey was not on Solicitor Evans. “I regard the incident as very unfortunate, but I do not t5ink it was personal to the solicitor,” Judge Midyette said. The court likewise expressed the opinion that Solicitor Evans was within his rights in asking that sort of question. Mr. Evans declared that he asked it in good faith and on representations of the neighbors.

But farmer Massey harn’t(?) taken it back when court quit for the evening. And it had been working all day and them some.

From the front page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, Sept. 19, 1925

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-09-19/ed-1/seq-1/