“In answer to a question whether he had a pistol or other weapon on the occasion of the homicide, Justice Field replied:  ’No, sir.  I have never had on my person or used a weapon since I went on the bench of the Supreme Court of this State, on the 13th of October, 1857, except once, when, years ago, I rode over the Sierra Nevada mountains in a buggy with General Hutchinson, and at that time I took a pistol with me for protection in the mountains.  With that exception, I have not had on my person, or used, any pistol or other deadly weapon.’”

Judge Terry had fallen very near the place where he first stopped, near the seat occupied by Justice Field at the table.

Neagle testified that if Justice Field had had a weapon, and been active in using it, he was at such a disadvantage, seated as he was, with Terry standing over him, that he would have been unable to raise his hand in his own defense.

A large number of witnesses were examined, all of whom agreed upon the main facts as above stated.  Some of them distinctly heard the blows administered by Terry upon Justice Field’s face and head.  All testified to the loud warning given Terry by Neagle that he was an officer of the law, accompanied by his command that Terry should desist.  It was all the work of a few seconds.  Terry’s sudden attack, the quick progress of which, from the first blow, was neither arrested nor slackened until he was disabled by the bullet from Neagle’s pistol, could have been dealt with in no other way.  It was evidently a question of the instant whether Terry’s knife or Neagle’s pistol should prevail.  Says Neagle: 

“He never took his eyes off me after he looked at me, or I mine off him.  I did not hear him say anything.  The only thing was he looked like an infuriated giant to me.  I believed if I waited two seconds I should have been cut to pieces.  I was within four feet of him.”

    Q.  “What did the motion that Judge Terry made with his right
    hand indicate to you?”

    A.  “That he would have had that knife out there within another
    second and a half, and trying to cut my head off.”

Terry, in action at such a time, from all accounts, was more like an enraged wild animal than a human being.  The supreme moment had arrived to which he had been looking forward for nearly a year, when the life of the man he hated was in his hands.  He had repeatedly sworn to take it.  Not privately had he made these threats.  With an insolence and an audacity born of lawlessness and of a belief that he could hew his way with a bowie-knife in courts as well as on the streets, he had publicly sentenced Judge Field to death as a penalty for vindicating the majesty of the law in his imprisonment for contempt.