Collier Davis Indicted (1871)
Excerpt from the Circuit Court column:
Collier DAVIS, colored, indicted for the murder of Adam WALKER, colored, an old man who, in the language of the attorney defending DAVIS, stood as it were in the “twilight of two worlds,” being over an hundred years of age, and who was murdered at the county Poor House in May last, in the dead hour of night, whilst wrapped in slumber, in a lonely dark cabin, by blows inflicted by a crutch, and all done on the supposition that old man WALKER was about to conjure or trick him – well he was arraigned and tried by a jury of his own selection, and found guilty of murder in the second degree, and assigned by the jury to serve fifteen years in the Penitentiary.
Source: Whig & Tribune. 9 September 1871. Available online at Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.