The prosecutor warned the jury that it would be a violation of their oaths to consider "Dementia Americana," declaring it had no status on the Atlantic sea-*board.
Mr. Jerome said: "This is simply a common, vulgar, everyday, tenderloin homicide." He denounced the plea of Attorney Delmas as "an appeal to the passions." There could, he said, be but one of four verdicts—murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, or "not guilty because of insanity."
The prosecutor also made a stirring appeal in behalf of the slain architect, declaring that he had been villainously maligned. Mr. Jerome said it seemed to him that the voice of the murdered Stanford White was crying out to him, "Can't you say one word for me? Must I go down to the fires of hell unheard—undefended."
William Travers Jerome, elected district attorney of New York on November 5, 1902, won a great reputation as a reformer and a foe of vice, gambling, crooked politicians, and every other evil. Before being elected prosecutor, on a fusion ticket which overwhelmed the corrupt Tammany hall machine, he was a justice of the court of special sessions in New York City.
As a private lawyer he was favorably known for the intense earnestness he put into the cases of his
