Darkness in Philadelphia

WOMEN

It seemed an open & shut case. A 205-Ib. barkeeper named Jim Comber, half seas over from a night of drinking, had brawled with a drunken companion on a Philadelphia street. The friend staggered and fell; witnesses hurrying to work at dawn saw Jim Comber kick him repeatedly in the head after he was down. Minutes later the man was dead. The prosecution asked for a second-degree murder conviction. Judge Joseph Sloane, summing up, told the jurors: "I do not see how you can find the defendant not guilty."

Then the jurors--all twelve of them women--retired. They were back, after less than two hours of deliberation, with a verdict that stunned the court: not guilty.

Judge Sloane, white-faced, turned on the jury: "Ladies of the jury," he said, "I tremble at what you did. One of the great bulwarks of our country is the jury system. Every little blot on that system --and this verdict is a blot on it--if continued and added to will gather into a great darkness. I dismiss you with a censure of this miscarriage of justice."

At that point, at least half of the jurors broke into tears; one fainted dead away in the box and had to be carried out.

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