A Murderer Acquitted

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 31, 1870

A Murderer Acquitted

Have we reached the time of which Isaiah speaks when “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off,” when “truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.”? McFarland, who openly, publicly, and deliberately, so far as a man whose soul was wrapt in flames of murderous and hellish hate, could be deliberate, shot down Mr. Richardson, has been acquitted by a New York jury, as “not guilty.” On what ground? That, probably, which was advocated by his counsel, Mr. Graham, who argued that at the moment of the act, when he was laboring under uncontrollable jealousy and anger, “the Deity stepped in and wiped out his mind.” That is, under the connivance of God and the devil, a terrible and dastardly murder is committed, and nobody is responsible. The devil instigates the brutal deed, and just then the Deity steps in and wipes out the man’s mind to render him irresponsible, and he satiates his revenge in the highest crime known to the law, and is “not guilty!” Could there be a more pitiable, Heaven-defying palliation of crime than this?