This monstrous charge was thus dismissed without a trial. The men accused were made to appear too insignificant in the world’s affairs to warrant a full and clear exoneration. They were let go like guilty culprits who just escaped the sting of the law’s lash. Their case is not singular. It is to be deplored that the law does not always make the vindication of a man, entangled in its meshes through the unwarranted suspicions of his enemies or neighbors, so clear and emphatic that he may stand innocent in reputation, unblemished, and without reproach, even as he did before the law laid hands upon him.
What would have happened had the process of law taken its full course? Doubtless the guilty conspirator would have been made to appear. To fasten a crime upon an innocent man is in itself a hideous crime, and by the very nolle prosse of this indictment a conspiracy was shown to exist which, had the district attorney of that day felt his whole duty, he would have disentangled by thoroughly sifting the evidence. He had a crime to fit to an individual. He should have gathered all the known details, examined every circumstance, however slight. He should not have lost a shred or tatter. For his work was to piece together a fabric of evidence to match a fabric of guilt. The garment would have fit but one man and that man the criminal.
In speaking of a district attorney’s obligations to the people, James W. Osborne, a distinguished attorney of New York City, and a former assistant in the district attorney’s office, says:
