City of Omaha

<p>From the circuit court of, second district, Perry county.</p> <p>Hon. William H. Cook, Judge.</p> <p>Haywood, the appellant, and another, were indicted for the murder of one Lydell; there was a severance, and appellant was separately tried, convicted of the murder, and sentenced to the penitentiary for life, from which conviction and sentence •he appealed to the supreme court.</p> <p>■ The dead body of Lydell was found in a pond in the vicinity of Hattiesburg. The appellant and one George Shelton, both negroes, were arrested, and subsequently indicted for murder. On the trial of appellant it appeared that deceased, on the evening before his death, was intoxicated, harassed by financial troubles and vexed by litigation; that he had been out of work for several weeks; and, on the evening .mentioned, he employed the appellant, a hack driver, to carry him to a house of ill fame, where he drank whiskey in company with the inmates of the place, after which he .left, riding in the hack, driven by another than appellant, and his body was subsequently discovered in the pond. Physicians were introduced as witnesses on the trial and their testimony conflicted as to whether judging from the condition of the body when taken from the water and examined by them, the deceased was alive or dead when put in the pond. There was sufficient testimony, if credited, to have proved an alibi for appellant.</p> <p>Gertrude Evans, an inmate of the resort, after testifying that Lydell, the deceased, in company with one Tutt and another person, spent some time at the place in company with several of the women, was asked by counsel for appellant if these persons had left Hattiesburg, and why they left; whether some of the women who were at the resort that night left the next morning for Birmingham, Alabama; and whether the women who were present that night were absent the next day. To all of these questions the state objected, and the objections were sustained.</p> <p>The evidence under which