A Hung Jury in the Green Lake Robbery Case
After deliberating for over thirty-four hours, the jury in the robbery trial of Eugene F. Boucke has been discharged without a verdict.
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After over thirty-four hours spent in an unsuccessful effort to agree upon the guilt or innocence of Eugene F. Boucke, the jury which tried him was discharged by Judge Bell in Seattle. Boucke was accused of the robbery of Mrs. Rose B. Blick on the evening of December 18, at her home in Green Lake. The circumstances attending the robbery were of a particularly aggravated nature, and every effort was made by the police to capture the two men who were concerned in the crime. Boucke was arrested in Sacramento, and a part of the jewelry taken from Mrs. Blick was found in his possession and at his house in Seattle. At the trial, he was positively identified by Mrs. Blick as one of the men who had robbed her. The defense was rested upon a strong alibi furnished by several witnesses, and upon the statement of the defendant that he had bought the jewelry in good faith from the man who presumably stole it.
“After over thirty-four hours spent in an unsuccessful effort to agree upon the guilt or innocence of Eugene F. Boucke, the jury which tried him was discharged.”
The Green Lake neighborhood, once a residential setting for violent crime and burglary, remains a central part of Seattle's evolving urban landscape. The reliance on eyewitness testimony versus a strong alibi echoes modern debates in criminal justice about the reliability of evidence and the difficulty of securing convictions in cases of high-profile home invasions.
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