Kentucky Lawyer

Wrong man on trial

 Mac Swinford Wrong man on trial It is a recognized practice of skillful criminal lawyers to put the prosecuting witnesses on trial in order to get the jury’s mind off the action of the defendant. These artists of rhetoric and masters of deception will cross-eamine the witnesses presented by the prosecution and attempt to discredit their testimony by inference and innuendo and have the jury completely confused as to who is the offender. It is said that Mr. W. A. Daugherty, a leading criminal lawyer in the upper Big Sandy valley for half a century, was so skillful in this respect that on one occasion he so dramatized the evil character of the chief prosecuting witness that the jury returned a verdict sending the witness to the penitentiary for fifteen years. This is only one of the many stories that have come down through the years of the prowess and eploits of the striking personalities among Kentucky lawyers. Sometimes I have felt their trenchant language and resourcefulness would not be tolerated by our modern judges. No kiss for Uncle Harry One of these actors of an earlier day was the Honorable Andrew Harrison Ward of the Cynthiana bar in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Uncle Harry, as he was affectionately called in Cynthiana and other central Kentucky towns where he practiced, was truly a giant of the old school in forensic debate before a jury. My father said he was the greatest natural lawyer he had ever known. He was the member of a prominent family, well educated in the profession and steeped in the classics. ...