“I do not ask you, gentlemen, to blind yourselves to the fact that the defendant has killed a man. I do not ask you to set aside the laws of the state which deal with murder. But I do ask you in the name of justice, to consider in this case another law—an unwritten law, but one which is as old as the history of mankind. And that is a man’s right to defend and protect the honor and virtue of his immediate family. Would any of you gentlemen hesitate to shoot down a wild beast that was attacking your wife or mother or sister? I ask you to consider this unwritten law before you condemn to ignominious death a man who had to kill in defense of his most cherished possession, a good and beautiful wife.

“The defendant, you have learned, is a clean living, hard working young man. You have also been told that he was forced to separate from his loving wife because of the pressure of poverty and his temporary inability to maintain a home. You have heard how his young wife, not yet twenty years of age, worked for eight hours a day behind a counter in a Five and Ten cent store, so that she should not be a financial burden to her struggling husband. Each working and saving to reëstablish their little home.

“And she, out of her meager savings, sent her husband to a training camp that he might make a come-back as a successful pugilist, while she remained in New York enduring every hardship for his sake.

“Ah, gentlemen, I ask you to meditate deeply upon the heartbreak and sacrifice involved in this living drama. And then, gentlemen, this good, adoring woman, thinking to aid her husband still further, accepted an offer of employment from a wealthy cabaret owner—a negro, ‘Money’ Johnson—a man who pretended to be benevolent and gentlemanly, when in reality he was a low, lustful, black beast. A man who made his money in underworld operations, a man who was released from prison but a few days before he was killed.

“This was the criminal who dared to affront the whole white world by luring to his hideaway this beautiful woman to gratify his lusts. There he kept her an unwilling prisoner, forced his brute attentions on her; tore the clothes from her body, and threatened her with a fate far worse than death to a sensitive, high strung soul.