hours of deliberation on the part of the jury. The prisoner
had stoutly denied knowing anything of the homicide. Shortly
before the date set for the execution, another man turned up
who admitted that he had committed the crime and made the
fullest sort of a confession. A new trial was thereupon
granted by the Appellate Court, and the convict, on the
application of the prosecuting attorney, was discharged and
quickly made himself scarce. It then developed that apart
from the prisoner's own confession there was practically
nothing to connect him with the crime. Under a statute making
such evidence obligatory in order to render a confession
sufficient for a conviction, the prisoner had to be
discharged.

In the case of Mabel Parker, a young woman of twenty, charged
with the forgery of a large number of checks, many of them for
substantial amounts, her husband made an almost successful
attempt to procure her acquittal by means of a new variation
of the old game. Mrs. Parker, after her husband had been
arrested for passing one of the bogus checks, had been duped
by a detective into believing that the latter was a fellow
criminal who was interested in securing Parker's release. In
due course she took this supposed friend into her confidence,
made a complete confession, and illustrated her skill by
impromptu copies of her forgeries from memory upon a sheet of
pad paper. This the detective secured and then arrested her.
She was indicted for forging the name Alice Kauser to a check
upon the Lincoln National Bank. On her trial she denied
having done so, and claimed that the detective had found the
sheet containing her supposed handwriting in her husband's