Edward Osborne is indicted for first-degree murder.
Sarah Spicer testifies that, on Sunday, November 13, 1910, around two o’clock in the morning, her husband, Louis Spicer, intervened to stop a fight among three men.
She witnessed Osborne pull out a gun and shoot her husband in the chest; Louis Spicer later died at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Other witnesses, acquaintances of the deceased, corroborate this account.
The defendant, testifying in his own defense, says that, after he had spoken that night to a woman sitting on her stoop on 3rd Street, a group of men had emerged from the Green Gates saloon shouting racial insults. One man had stabbed him with a knife; others had started hitting him with their fists. He had feared for his life and had discharged his revolver in self-defense.
The jury rendered a verdict of not guilty.