100 years ago in Spokane: A saucy defense attorney entertained court spectators with his insults to the prosecution

Jay Hough’s defense lawyers unexpectedly rested their case after a raucous morning of testimony.

“The spectators frequently broke into roars of laughter, and were frequently rapped to silence by the court bailiff,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reporter wrote.

The mirth was apparently provoked by the “merciless manner in which attorney W.H. Plummer attacked the state’s witnesses” and the prosecutor. At one point, Plummer accused the prosecutor of introducing new evidence because “your case has fallen flat.” Later, he told the prosecutor, “Oh, don’t get peevish just because you’ve fallen down on this case.”

Plummer was attempting to show that Hough was bullied into participating in a massive financial fraud by his senior partner, John B. Milholland.

Hough also said that Milholland tried to get him to participate in a suicide pact if they were caught. Plummer entered into evidence a tube of morphine, which Milholland gave him for the purpose of killing himself.

When it became obvious that the scheme had unraveled, and an investor was going to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hough turned himself in to authorities instead of committing suicide. Milholland shot himself while police were pounding on his door.

Also from the court beat: W.C. Davidson told the court that he was a former vaudeville performer turned “professional locator of whisky.”

He claimed that he was hired by a man from British Columbia to “locate whisky, sample it and make a deal for it.”

That’s why he had 10 quarts of whisky in his room at the Davenport Hotel when police raided it.

He further claimed that the officers who raided his room drank one of his quarts.