Albemarle, April 1—There have been no developments in the status of the case against N.C. Cranford who was to have been tried here this week upon a charge of murdering two Stanly county chain gang prisoners and assaulting another, since yesterday. Much talk about motions and re-submissions to the grand jury have so confused the facts that the average layman hardly knows what the present status of the case is. Briefly, the situation is about this:
In the first place the case has been continued and will not be tried at this term of court. That is a settled fact.
In the second place, a motion has been made by Solicitor Phillips to move the case to some other county for trial. Judge Schenk has not ruled on the motion.
Then, too the defendant lodged a motion to quash the bills of indictment found by the grand jury serving at a former term under Judge McElroy. The judge has not ruled on that motion.
Furthermore, upon the motion to quash the bills of indictment against Cranford, through an abundance of precaution, lest the court might hold the bills irregular and release the defendant Cranford, Solicitor Phillips asked the court to submit other bills to the present grand jury. This was done, but the grand jury did not act on the bills; why the grand jury of the present term did not return either “not a true bill” or “a true bill” is uncertain, but it is surmised that two or three of the members wanted to return “not a true bill” and other members were unwilling to let the matter go at that, and that there was no possibility of getting any kind of unanimous action with the result that the foreman handed the bills back to the court without action.
So practically speaking, the cases now stand just where they did last week this time, and will stand there unless Judge Schenck shall rule to quash the bills or remove the case to another county for trial. The judge will announce his ruling before adjournment of the present term of court.
From page 5 of The Concord Daily Tribune, April 3, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-04-03/ed-1/seq-5/
No comments:
Post a Comment