Not in many years, if ever before, has there been such profound and widespread interest in North Carolina in a murder trial as has been manifested during the past two weeks in the trial at Rockingham of W.B. Cole, wealthy cotton mill owner, for the killing of W.W. Ormond, ex-service man and former sweetheart of Cole’s daughter. And perhaps never before in this State has a man been acquitted on such a flimsy plea, so far as the law is concerned. It is quite evident that the jury rendered a sympathetic verdict based on the unwritten law.
It is not difficult to understand how the jury evidently felt about it. Each of them is a married man with children, and each no doubt felt as many other good citizens feel, that he probably would have done the same thing under the same circumstances. It was evidently not a verdict according to the law and the evidence.
If one may judge by expressions heard in the average knot of men on the street, the verdict is approved by two men out of three that express themselves. The majority of men seem to feel that in a case of that kind a man is justified in taking the law into his own hands and acting as judge, jury and executioner. The fact that it is outraging the majesty of the law and trampling it under foot seems to make no difference.
But it would be a grievous mistake to conclude that because Cole was acquitted other men are given license to kill under provocation of slander and insult.
From the editorial page of The Robesonian, Lumberton, N.C., Monday, Oct. 12, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn84026483/1925-10-12/ed-1/seq-4/
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