June 15, 1922
At the June term of the circuit court, the most interesting case put on the stage was the murder trial in which John Brown was convicted of murder in the second degree for shooting and killing Roy Morris.
This county has gone through a long series of murder trials in the last few years, but his clears the docket for the time being. The prosecution has been vigorous and the court diligent. Law and order generally have been in the ascendant and it looks like peace has once more spread its healing wings over our beloved county, but it occurs to us to put a finger to the head as we say this.
Daniel Webster argued that every murder unpunished takes away something from the security of every man’s life, but around every murder are many facts and circumstances showing the moving cause, so that a recital of matters that result in murder have a peculiar interest to the student of the human mind, the psychoanalyst.
John Brown came into court. He was very tall and big. He was very black. His features were as impassive as if cut from wood. His face was devoid of expression. He had no money and Judge Sharp assigned F. R. Hill, a famous trial lawyer, to defend him. Prosecutor Edgar had looked into the case carefully and intimated that it was second degree murder, which opinion the jury afterwards confirmed.
It was a case concerning the colored society exclusively. The colored people were valued helpers of the big company at Cass. They looked rich and prosperous. They were the best dressed persons at court…
At Cass, the colored people live in a street of twelve houses on the east side of the river. There are eight houses on one side of the street and four on the other. April 10th, being payday, some of the men craved action and a poker game was in progress in one of the houses at the north end of the street.
Rube Coles, from off the mountain, was in that game. John Brown seems to have been the host of the party. He is a newcomer from out the deep south. It is the custom, in card games of a certain kind, to tax the accumulation of counters in the center of the table formed by the contribution of the players during the time that the ownership is in question. It is called the rake-off from the jackpot. It is the overhead charge which breaks every patron of the game sooner or later…
John Brown at first took out a nickel, but the game got larger and then he proceeded to take a quarter, on the super tax theory, and Rube protested and argued that it was contrary to the tenets of poker… But John Brown was not there to be instructed in the game, and he observed bitterly that Spruce Mountain unmentionables were hard and tight, meaning thereby that they refused to pay adequately for their entertainment.
One word brought on another and Rube went outside and selected two pieces of rock, about as big as a dornick which he placed in a convenient way…. then immediately went to another house to hide out.
Brown walked the length of the street to the hall of one Douglas and went in the front door. No one was at home and he took down a double barrel shotgun from the wall of one of the rooms and went out the back door and came back and took a stand at the corner of one of the houses.
Then Roy Morris was moved to make a rendezvous with death. He was a friend of Rube Coles. He had courage. He could not bear to think of his buddy hiding out from a strange negro, even if he did have a gun. He called to Rube to come forth, and Rube heard the summons and left the shelter of the home. He had no more than put his foot on the street until he saw John Brown holding a gun on him and he was peppered with small shot. Rube went away from that place on a run. The doctors afterwards picked some one hundred and fifty shot out of his person…
Roy Morris was present and saw his friend shot, and as far as he could have known at the time, fatally shot. And he must have felt that his unfortunate advice had caused Rube to come forth and face his adversary and be assassinated.
A whole chapter could be written on the evils of free advice. It is not necessary, for Kipling has reduced it to a line: “Unsought advice is cursed of God.”
Roy Morris must have decided instantly to avenge the injury to Coles. Morris was a small man and Brown was a big, dangerous man and armed with a double barreled gun… The evidence is conflicting as to whether Morris ever attacked Brown. At the sound of the first shot, the whole population of the quarters must have poured out of doors. Brown seems to have been walking away and Morris was rapidly overhauling him. Then, just as the fatal shot boomed out, there was some conflict in the testimony of the numerous observers. Some think that as Morris all but overtook Brown, that he stumped his toe on an irregularity in the street and stumbled, and in that instant, Brown, without raising his gun from the crook of his elbow turned his face toward Morris and pulled trigger… Morris died from the wound in a few hours…
Brown’s plea was self defense, and there was enough in his favor to save him from a conviction of murder in the first degree, but the winged words of his counsel could carry him no further toward safety, for the jury brought in a verdict of second degree murder which carries a penalty of not less than five nor more than 18 years’ imprisonment…