Report of the trial of Leavitt Alley : indicted for the murder of Abijah Ellis, in the Supreme judicial court of Massachusetts / reported by Franklin Fiske Heard.
- Alley, Leavitt
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the trial of Leavitt Alley : indicted for the murder of Abijah Ellis, in the Supreme judicial court of Massachusetts / reported by Franklin Fiske Heard. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![by circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is used in the common affairs of life and must be used in cases of secret homicide. [The Attorney-General then read from an extract read by Attorney-General Clifford in the Webster trial, bearing upon circumstantial evidence.] Now, then, gentlemen, as in our social state secret offences will be committed, as it is necessary for the protection of the virtuous and good that laws should be enacted and acted upon, it is necessary that we should have officers to carry them out, and it is not to be argued that officers of the law arc hounding a man to conviction, when they are only perform- ing their sworn duty. 1 undertake, upon the evidence offered here, lionestly to ask you to find the prisoner guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of Abijah Ellis. Murder in the first degree is the killing with premeditated malice aforethought. The time of premeditation may be long or short, but it is enough if the intention is formed before the killing is done. The defence has not claimed that in this case there is any other degree of murder except the first degree, and in circumstantial evidence the law presumes that the killing was done with malice. The jury are not to believe the evidence presented as men and disbelieve it as jurors; they are to act as in the highest affairs of life when they say that Lcavitt Alley was guilty. In this case we start with the remains of Abijah Ellis, and there is no mistake as to identity. Abijali Ellis was little known in this community, quite as humble as Leavitt Alley, though perhaps worth a little more money. No wonder that the workmen at the gas-house at Cambridge shrank back aghast when they found the headless trunk of a murdered man. It was treasure trove that docs not often float on tidal waters. Were men who fell dead in the street of heart disease mutilated in the manner that these remains were? Gentlemen, this evidence is as satisfactory as though Sanlioru had sworn that he saw Leavitt Alley cut him up, and yet this is circumstantial evidence. After the finding of the remains the first question was, Who did it ? and every person consti- tuted himself a detective. The police are called, and the coroner takes ])Ossessiun of the remains. In the barrels are](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2103848x_0139.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
