“I yield to no man in my desire to see a better day of law and order in this town.  We are two years old in time, but a century old in violence.  Is it merely your wish that we add one more grave to the long rows on our hillsides?  Is that your wish?  Do you want a trial, or do you wish merely an execution?  Gentlemen, I tell you this is the most important day in the history of this town.  Let us here make our stand for the law.  The old ways will no longer serve.  We are at the turning of the road.  Let us follow the law.

“Now, under the law you must, in order to prove the crime of murder, be able to show the body of the victim; you must show that murder has really been done.  You must show a motive, a reason.  You must show, or be prepared to show, when required, a mental responsibility on the part of the accused.  All these things you must show by the best possible testimony, not by what you think, or what you have heard, but by direct testimony, produced here in this court.  You can’t ask the accused man to testify against himself.  You can’t ask me, his counsel, to testify against him.  Hence there is left but one witness who can testify directly in this case.  There is not one item of remains, not one bone, one rag, one shred of clothing, not one iota of evidence introduced before this honourable court to show that the body of Calvin Greathouse was ever identified or found.  There is no corpus delicti.  How shall you say that this missing man has been murdered?  Think this thing over.  Remember, if you hang this man, you can never bring him back to life.

“There must be some motive shown for the supposition of such an act as murder.  What motive can be shown here?  Certainly not that of robbery.  The horse of the missing man came back alone, its lariat dragging, as we shall prove.  It had not been ridden since the lariat was broken.  You all know, as we shall prove, that this man Juan was never known to ride a horse.  We shall prove that he walked sixty miles, to the very spot where the horse had been tied, and that he scorned to touch a horse on his whole journey.  He wanted no horse.  He stole no horse.  That was no motive.  There has been no motive shown.  Would a criminal lead the officers of the law to the very spot where he had committed his crime?  Had this been theft, or murder, would this man have taken any one directly and unhesitatingly to that spot?  I ask you this.

“To be subject to the law, as you very well know, a man must be morally responsible.  He must know right and wrong.  Even the savage Indians admit this principle of justice.  They say that the man of unsound mind is touched by the hand of the Great Spirit.  Shall we be less merciful than they?  Look at this smiling giant before you.  He has been touched by the hand of the Almighty.  God has punished him enough.