The Judge Takes the Stand
A trial in the superior court becomes heated when a Seattle judge takes over the cross-examination of a land agent.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An amusing incident occurred in the course of the trial of the case of the Fairhaven Land Company vs. E. A. Scott, which was concluded Thursday in the superior court, Judge Humes, of Seattle, on the bench. George A. Black, who was land agent for the land company at the time the property in question was purchased, had just been cross-examined at considerable length by counsel for Scott, a prominent Tacoma lawyer, and was about to leave the stand when Judge Humes propounded a number of interrogatories to him, evoking some very interesting testimony. Scott’s counsel seemed to be considerably disturbed in spirit, and when the judge had concluded and Black had left the stand he arose and said: 'Your honor, I move that all the testimony of the witness which was evoked by the questions of the court be stricken out, as irrelevant, immaterial, illegal and without bearing upon the case.' The judge whirled around in his chair and answered quickly: 'All right. I think so myself, but there has been so much of that kind of questioning that I thought I would take a hand in it.'
“All right. I think so myself, but there has been so much of that kind of questioning that I thought I would take a hand in it.”
This vignette offers a glimpse into the often performative and adversarial nature of 19th-century courtroom proceedings. Judicial interventions remain a sensitive topic today, though the blunt humor of Judge Humes' admission that the questioning was just for sport would likely cause a mistrial in a modern setting.
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