The Axe Handle Verdict: A Bank Robbery Retrial
After a conviction based on disputed forensic evidence, the Supreme Court has ordered a new trial for three men accused of bombing the First Bank of White Bluffs.
The news comes from Prosser that the case of the three men who were charged with blowing the safe in the First Bank of White Bluffs last year will be tried again in June. The blowing of the safe created considerable excitement and the men were captured by the Sheriff of Grant County just outside the city limits of Ephrata, their arrest occurring just a few minutes before the arrival of a car carrying Sheriff Romans and two local men who had made a spectacular drive from White Bluffs. The jury that tried the case last summer it is claimed went outside of the evidence in arriving at their verdict of guilty, by finding that an axe handle found in the bank exactly fitted an axe blade found in the car belonging to the men. An appeal was taken on this ground and the Supreme Court has ordered a new trial. The men were sentenced to from one to fifteen years in the penitentiary and have been confined in Walla Walla since they were sentenced.
“The jury that tried the case last summer it is claimed went outside of the evidence in arriving at their verdict of guilty.”
Forensic science has advanced significantly since the 1920s, but the controversy over 'circumstantial' physical matches remains a flashpoint in modern legal appeals. The White Bluffs bank heist highlights how early local law enforcement relied on creative, and sometimes legally shaky, physical evidence to secure convictions in high-stakes regional crimes.
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