Mr. Montgomery said:
"The opinion also charges Mrs. Terry with perjury, after she has sworn
that it was genuine."
The judgment of a court may be referred to by one of its judges, even
though the rendering of the judgment convicted a party or a witness,
of perjury, without furnishing the perjurer with a justification
for denouncing the judge. Mr. Montgomery furthermore said that the
"opinion charged her not only with forgery and perjury, but with
unchastity as well; for if she had not been Sharon's wife, she had
unquestionably been his kept mistress." He says:
"At the announcement of this decision from the bench in the
presence of a crowded court-room; a decision which she
well knew, before the going down of another sun, would be
telegraphed to the remotest corners of the civilized world, to
be printed and reprinted with sensational head-lines in every
newspaper, and talked over by every scandal-monger on the face
of the earth; was it any wonder--not that it was right--but
was it any wonder that this high-spirited, educated woman,
sprung from as respectable a family as any in the great State
of Missouri, proud of her ancestry, and prizing her good name
above everything on this earth, when she heard herself thus
adjudged in one breath to be guilty of forgery, perjury, and
unchastity, and thus degraded from the exalted position of
wife--to which the Supreme Court of her State had said she was
entitled--down to that of a paid harlot; was it any wonder, I
say, that like an enraged tigress she sprang to her feet, and
in words of indignation sought to defend her wounded honor?"
Mr.
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