100 years ago in Spokane: High drama persisted in the new Maurice Codd trial, bringing arrest threats and tears for the defendants

The soap opera known as the Maurice Codd subornation of perjury trial continued when attorney Fred Robertson, a defendant, stood up and shouted at a prosecutor, “You lie! You are a liar and a scoundrel!”

His fellow attorneys tried in vain to pull him back down to his chair.

Judge W.D. Askren dismissed the jury again and lectured Robertson about hurling invective across the courtroom. The judge told Robertson, that, as a “skilled lawyer,” he should “know better.” Robertson replied that the prosecutor shouldn’t be able to “turn on a defendant and shake his finger at him in that way.”

The judge threatened Robertson with a jail sentence for contempt if he continued to disrupt the trial. He added that he probably should already have charged several of the attorneys with contempt.

Meanwhile, defense lawyer Frank Graves revealed his strategy for seeking acquittal for the 13 defendants. He said that if anyone suborned perjury, only one man could have done it: attorney Lester Edge. Yet Edge did no such thing.

“Again, I repeat, if Beatrice Sant was suborned, then Lester Edge did it, and for this reason I will confine my arguments to the guilt of Edge,” he told the jury.

Graves went on to say that there was no evidence of Edge’s guilt.

At this point, “tears fell from the eyes of attorney Edge,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

From the museum beat: The fledgling Spokane Public Museum, housed in cramped quarters in a downtown building, was adding several new displays to its collection.

The new displays included a number of obsidian arrowheads, along with a number of fossils showing outlines of leaves.