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With
black and white TV Westerns still in their prime, Hollywood decided
to produce a series that would put a Perry Mason-style lawyer in
the Old West.
They chose as their protagonist Temple
Houston, the youngest son of Sam
Houston. Born in the Texas governor's mansion in 1860 only three
years before his famous father's death, Temple
Houston became a lawyer and for a time served in the legislature.
He died in 1905.
The series debuted Sept. 19 1963, but gunned down by poor ratings,
it bit the dust on April 2, 1964, cancelled after only one season.
Since two of Temple
Houston's children were still alive when the series aired, producers
were careful to portray Sam's son in a positive way. No biography
had yet been published on Temple, so the show's writers likely had
never heard about the time the hard-drinking younger Houston stood
in defense of a woman of easy (well, affordable) virtue.
Temple moved from the Texas
Panhandle to Woodward, OK in 1894. There, in 1899, he was waiting
in court to represent a client while the judge cleared several minor
cases from his docket. One of the defendants was Minnie Stacey,
a young prostitute. She being without counsel, either out of a sense
of chivalry or just for the heck of it, Houston offered to represent
her pro bono.
Fortunately for posterity, a reporter with the Kansas City Star
also sat in the courtroom to cover the murder trial in which Houston
would defend the accused man. It may have taken the journalist a
moment to realize he would get two stories that day, but Houston
surely had not spoken long before it dawned on the scribe that he
was seeing a fine human interest story unfold.
Houston had been fighting a cold and his voice was weak. Leaning
so close to the jury that "he could almost have laid his hands on
the shoulders of each..." the lawyer began his closing argument
"in a low, clear voice."
"Gentleman,"
he said, "you heard with what cruelty the prosecution referred to
the sins of this woman as if her condition was of her own preference.
The evidence has painted you a picture of her life and surroundings.
Do you think that they were of her own choosing? Do you think that
she willingly embraced a life so revolting and horrible?" The lawyer
quickly answered his question.
"...No, gentlemen, one of our own sex was the author of her ruin,
more to blame than she..."
After a brief
hesitation, he continued:
"Gentlemen,
the very promises of God are denied her. He said: 'Come unto me
all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
She [the defendant] has indeed labored and is heavy laden but if
at this instant she were to kneel down before us...and confess her
redeemer and beseech His tender mercies, where is the church that
would receive her?"
Gathering momentum:
"And even if they accepted her, scorn and mockery would greet her
and those she met would gather around them their skirts the more
closely to avoid the pollution of her touch. Would you tell me a
single employment where she could realize 'Give us this daily bread?'"
Sticking with his Biblical theme, Houston broached the story of
the prodigal son.
"He was one
of us, like her destroyer," he said, "but for this prodigal daughter
there is no return. Were she, with her wasted form and bleeding
feet to drag herself back to her childhood home, she, the fallen
and the lost, what would be her welcome?"
Houston urged the panel to consider that when they began their deliberation.
"One should
respect her grief and I tell you that there reigns over her penitent
and chastened spirit a desolation now that none, no none but the
searcher of all hearts, can ever know."
The lawyer then faced the prosecuting attorney.
"They wish to fine this woman and make her leave. They wish to wring
from the wages of her shame the price of this meditated injustice;
to take from her the little money she might have; and God knows,
gentlemen, it came hard enough. I say unto you that our Justice,
fitly symbolized by woman's form, does not ask that you add aught
to the woes of this unhappy one, who only asks at your hands the
pitiful privilege of being left alone."
But Houston
was not finished.
"The Master,
while on earth, while he spake in wrath and rebuke to the kings
and rulers, never reproached one of those. One he forgave, another
he acquitted.
"You remember both--and now looking upon this friendless outcast,
if any of us can say unto her 'I am holier than you,' in the respect
in which she is charged with sinning, who is he?"
Houston concluded his argument with this:
"Now, gentlemen, do as your Master did twice, under the very circumstances
that surround you -- tell her to go in peace."
Within 10 minutes, the jury voted to acquit.
© Mike
Cox
"Texas Tales" March
16, 2017 column
Related Story:
Temple
Lea Houston, son of Sam Houston
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