100 years ago in Spokane: There was a new courtroom debate over proceeding with Maurice Codd’s second trial

Judge W.J. Askren refused to dismiss the charges against Maurice Codd for subornation of perjury.

Codd’s lawyer had filed a motion for dismissal on the grounds that Codd could not be tried for a second time upon the same set of facts. He had already been acquitted of murdering Frank P. Brinton.

The prosecutors argued that he was not being tried for the same crime.

“There are just two points to be determined: Did Beatrice Sant give false evidence (in the earlier trial)? Was she suborned?” the prosecutor asked.

The judge agreed, although he admitted that the trial might hinge upon the question of whether Codd threw Brinton over the railing. Sant had testified in the first trial that Brinton “fell” over the railing but later recanted and said she did not see the fight or the fall.

Also from the trial beat: The retrial was underway in the manslaughter case against W.J. Van Skike, who ran down Mrs. S. Kirkpatrick with his auto, and then drove many blocks as she was dragged screaming under the car.

A guilty verdict in the first trial was thrown out on appeal.

This second trial featured a chilling bit of testimony from a witness, who said he saw Mrs. Kirkpatrick trying to avoid being struck by the speeding auto. The next thing he knew, he saw “her hat roll out into the middle of the street.”

“I got out of my car and picked up the hat,” he said.

He was “rather mystified as to where the woman had gone.”