1893 COTTONDALE MURDER TRIAL
from the December 14, 1893 TUSKALOOSA GAZETTE
THE STATE V8. DANIEL WEBSTER. \
The trial of the above cause was begun Friday morning. The defendant was indicted for murder in the second degree lor killing W.O. Harris near Cottondale, on Aug. the 22nd of this year, the story of which will be remembered by our readers.
There was one eye witness to the killing, a Mrs. Courtney, who was the cause of all the trouble. Her story of the difficulty is essentially as follows. On the day of the killing about nine or ten o'clock A. M. she and the deceased were sitting on a log near the path that leads from the home of the defendant to Cotlondale when the defendant came up. The greetings of the day were passed when deceased asked defendant what he had been following him up for and made for him striking him four or five times in the face with his fist. The men then clinched, Webster drawing his knife and stabbing four times in the back and once in the hip The deceased then fell to his knees and then on his face and expired in a few minutes.
Immediately after the killing the defendant left through the woods and was seen no more that day until arrested toward night when he denied the killing or any knowledge thereof. At the preliminary examination and at the final trial the defendant admitted the killing and pleaded self defense in justification thereof. There was another witness, one King, who claimed to have seen the whole difficulty from beginning to end, but this witness was examined before the coroner and swore that he had not seen the defendant since in early morning before the killing until he was arrested. His testimony was in substance a corroboration of what was testified to by the woman Courtney, their evidence differing only in minor details.
Tho knife, used by Webster and exhibited to the Jury was an ugly looking thing, being on the order of a carving knife and having a blade nearly eight inches long, and was carried in a scabbard.
There were a number of witnesses who testified as to threats made by the defendant against the life of deceased and evidence tending to show that on the evening before the killing the defendant had in his possession the same knife with which the killing was done and that he made the remark that he would make it hot for someone in Cottondale before Saturday night, also evidence tending to show that the defendant had been following the deceased and the woman Courtney for some time in the morning prior to the killing.
The woman in the case was one of notoriously bad character and the deceased was a married man who at one time in his life had been a minister of the gospel. The defendant was also a married man but bad been divorced from his wife..
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home