When it was all over, and the defendant had passed out of the courtroom rejoicing, he turned to the foreman and asked the reason for the verdict.
"Did you hear your chief witness say he was a carpenter ?" inquired the foreman.
"Why, certainly," answered the district attorney, "Did you hear me ask him what he paid for that ready-made pine door he claimed to be working on when he saw the assault ?" The prosecutor recalled the incident and nodded.
"Well, he said ten dollars--and I knew he was a liar.

A door like that don't cost but four-fifty!" It is, perhaps, too much to require a knowledge of carpentry on the part of a lawyer trying an assault case.

Yet the juror was undoubtedly right in his deduction.
In a case where insanity is the defence, the State must dig up and have at hand every person it can find who knew the accused at any period of his career.

He will probably claim that in his youth he was kicked in a game of foot-ball and fractured his skull, that later he fell into an elevator shaft and had concussion of the brain, or that he was hit on the head by a burglar.

It is usually difficult, if not impossible, to disprove such assertions, but the prosecutor must be ready, if he can, to show that foot-ball was not invented until after the defendant had attained maturity, that it was some other man who fell down the elevator shaft, and to produce the burglar to deny that the assault occurred.
Naturally, complete preparation for an important trial demands the presence of many witnesses who ultimately are not needed and who are never called.