Excerpt from American State Trials, Vol. 15: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials Which Have Taken Place in the United States From the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day The cases in this volume were edited by Judge Law son, Who died Oct. 28, 1921. For more than twenty years he had been collecting the material for American State Trials, the compila tion of which he looked upon as his crowning life work. He felt that the great trials in our State and Federal courts should be recorded in permanent form, as they are a part, and an important part, of American History. It was a great task and a real service to posterity. John Davison Lawson was a prolific writer. His reputation as an author of legal works is secure for all time. He held many distinguished positions. He had been Dean of the Law Department of the Univer sity of Missouri, Editor of American Law Review, Associate Editor Of the Journal Of Criminal Law and Criminology, and he was Special Commissioner from the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminol ogy to investigate the administration of criminal law in Great Britain and France. His legal works em brace, leading cases simplified, expert and opinion evidence, presumptive evidence, DE fences TO crime, rights and remedies, the american law OF contracts, the law OF bail ments, etc., etc. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.