100 years ago in Spokane: After being ‘argued to death’ for over a month, the jury was finally deciding the Maurice Codd defendants’ fate

The Maurice Codd subornation of perjury trial finally went to the jury after dragging on for a month and a half.

Prosecutor Walter S. Fulton delivered a six-hour closing argument, which could be summed up in one sentence: Maurice Codd’s family and defense team conspired to solicit false testimony in his murder trial, which resulted in his acquittal.

The public remained gripped by the story to the end.

“Deputy sheriffs, police officers and fire department officials were required to handle the crowd, which filled the courthouse hallways …,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported. “So crowded did the room become during the morning session that Judge Askren dismissed the jury and called Sheriff Long … to clear the room of persons standing.”

The trial was uncommonly long because there were 16 defendants (whittled down to 13 at trial), and many of them were lawyers. So there were lawyers defending themselves as well as lawyers defending lawyers.

Fulton defended Beatrice Sant, who recanted her testimony in the murder trial and had become the prosecution’s star witness.

“It is true that Beatrice Sant fell from virtue, but she has risen,” Fulton said. “Her past life was dragged out by the defense and paraded before you jury men and woman several times. They say she can’t be believed because she is a fallen woman. She was no doubt a fallen woman, but she isn’t any more. She has married and will make a true wife to that little farmer boy from Canada if given a square deal.”

He said “evil days await” if law is trampled underfoot, but he was confident “that your verdict in this case will prove that no such conditions are in store for us.”