You can't. Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't
I? Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case. Get
something for your work. Don't be a pair of fools. Settle it."
"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.
He winked a fat eye. "Jury'll hang. Every time. I'm here to tell you
so. Better settle it." [3]
We refused to. What was the use of courts if we could not get justice
for this crippled boy? What was the use of practising law if we could
not get a verdict on evidence that would convince a blind man? Settle
it? Never!
So they went to our client and persuaded the boy to give up.
"Big Steve," attorney for the tramway company! The gas company's
officers in court! The business men insulting the judge in his Club!
The defendant's brother at the head of one of the smelter companies! I
began to "connect up" "the Cat."
Gardener and I held a council of war. If it was possible for these men
to "hang" juries whenever they chose, there was need of a law to make
something less than a unanimous decision by a jury sufficient to give a
verdict in civil cases. Colorado needed a "three-fourths jury law."
Gardener was a popular young man, a good "mixer," a member of several
fraternal orders, a hail-fellow-well-met, and as interested as I was in
politics.
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