ACQUITTED OF MURDER

Hardback. Protection for the innocent? Or escape for the guilty? In this searching book the author looks at 7 famous murderers and their trials, and concludes that those laws which have been written to protect the innocent, have more often allowed the guilty murderer to laugh at the courts and go free to kill again. The author has gone through innumerable court records, newspaper files, and eye-witness accounts, as well as made personal investigations, to trace in detail celebrated murderers and their cases. From the North Carolina-Tennessee mountains comes the case of William Hall, who shot across the state line and killed his former crony, Andrew Bryson. Although the jury convicted Hall of murder, he was set free because his victim had stood in a different state. Even more fabulous is the case of Mary Hartung, the Albany Hausfrau, who fed her husband arsenic after she took up with one of her boarders, but whose neck was saved when the New York Legislature deliberately fixed the Penal Code to make this possible. Most shocking is the account of Michael Alex, the 19yr old killer whose first trial in New York stretched to five, and whose conviction came only after additional robberies and a suibsequent killing. Time and time again, in the absurd run-around of legal technicalities, criminals have been set free - but not because of their innocence. The cases discussed simply illustrate the thousands of times criminals have been able to escape punishment through legal "loopholes", or quibbles. Each case also illustrates the terrible truth that "to acquit a criminal is to commit by his hands all the offenses of which he is afterwards guilty." 257pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned pp. o/w Vg+ in sl. frayed and chipped Vg. pcdw (designed by Carl Kock)..