FULL
TEXT: Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 28. – Feminine beauty! Through the ages, kings and
kingdoms have fallen because of it, and American murder juries continue to fall
for it.
Ask
any criminal lawyer. He will tell you that youth, beauty and charm is as
valuable to a woman on trial for her life as a rock-ribbed, copper riveted
alibi.
Court
records from all sections of the country bear out this assertion. It is as
difficult to convict a pretty woman of murder as it is for the Biblical camel
to pass through the eye of a needle.
The
latest instance is the case of “Peggy” Marie Heal, blessed with an abundance of
beauty and charm. “Peggy” shot her sweetheart in Kansas City after he had told
her of his fifty other loves.
“I
did it to save other girls,” Peggy told the jury, demurely glancing at the
jurors. A tear, or two, a shudder and the jury broke all records in returning
of not guilty.
But
in the dingy little courtroom at Texas River, N. J., Ivy Giberson was on trial.
She also was charged with murder – for the slaying of her husband.
When
she faced the jury, middle-aged, she had lost much of her youthful charm. Her
face, wrinkled with care and suffering, was turned to the jury in a mute plea
as she finished her testimony.
“Guilty”
was the verdict, and Mrs. Giberson now is about to spend her declining years
behind the bars of the Jersey penitentiary unless new efforts to lesson the
penalty succeed. Three other women, each possessing youth and comeliness, now
are on trial in widely separated cities.
Mabel
Champion, 22 and decidedly pretty, is facing the death chair in Judge Maurice
Bernon’s court here. She is charged with shooting a man to death in a downtown
restaurant. Prosecuting her is Edward C. Stanton, State’s Attorney of Cuyahoga
County; who has sent more murderers to the electric chair in less than two
years than any of his predecessors did in four.
But
Walter D. Meals, former appellate judge and her chief counsel, isn’t worrying.
Meals is dependant upon his client’s grace and as much charm to his expert
knowledge of the law. Meals is a psychologist.
His
client appears in court, in gowns carefully designed for the trials, gowns
which accentuate her delicate beauty and bring out every physical charm. Her
every act in the courtroom has been carefully rehearsed. She is playing a part
in a drama the climax of which may be—DEATH.
In
Los Angeles, Clara Phillips, accused of the grewsome hammer slaying of Alberta
Meadows, is on trial. She also is comely and fair to look upon, and no one will
be more surprised than the State’s attorneys if the jury convicts her of murder
in the first degree.
Philadelphia
also has it’s beauty on trial. She is Catherine Rosier, charged with the
killing of her husband and his alleged stenographer-sweetheart in his office.
Her acquittal is predicted.
And
out in a Los Angeles jail cell is Madalyne Obenchain. She also has youth and
beauty. Twice the State has attempted to send her to the death chair for the
murder of J. Belton Kennedy, but each time, the jury has disagreed and now she
is awaiting her third trial, which is almost certain to result in her
acquittal, according to close observers.
[“When Laws Meet Fair Charmers Beauties Usually
Win Verdicts,” San Antonio Light (Tx.), Sep. 22, 1922, p. 1]
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