Charge of the court to the jury

In the District Court for the Second Judicial District of Utah Territory: September Term, 1876:

The People &c vs. John D. Lee, impleaded with [&c?] Defendants

Charge of the Court to the jury:

Gentlemen of the Jury:

In order to aid you in arriving at the correct conclusion in your verdict, the duty devolves upon the court to give you in charge the law applicable to the case, and to make such suggestions as the necessities of the case may seem to require.

You are, however, the sole judges of the facts and of the credibility of the witnesses; and whatever I may say to you respecting the facts, although it may assist you in the consideration of the case, is not binding upon you.

As you are the sole judges of the facts, so on the other hand, the court is the sole judge

of the law, and the jury cannot pass their judgment upon any questions of law. Therefore, whatever is declared by the Court to be the law is conclusive and binding upon you.

The prisoner at the bar, John D. Lee, stands before you charged with being a participant and leader in a most atrocious and unprovoked massacre of human beings, men, women and children, at Mountain Meadows in the south-west part of the District, in the month of September, 1857.

The evidence shows that the persons killed were emigrants, who had passed, with a number of wagons and many cattle, through the settlements of this Territory, and were about passing out of the Territory upon the deserts to the west, on their way to Southern California. Before beginning their journey over the wide deserts, they were recruiting their stock upon the then rank and rich grasses of the Mountain Meadows. For several days a combination of Indians and white men had been making attacks upon them, but having failed in every effort at their overthrow and been

driven back, the resort was had to the basest treachery and deception to effect their destruction. Under a white flag, --a flag of truce--the prisoner at the bar, approached the emigrants and having there met a delegation from them, the fears of the emigrants by some means, were allayed and they gave up their arms, putting them into wagons from the attacking party, and then being unarmed, they put themselves under the protection of the white men which the prisoner, Lee, was one.

You have heard the sickening details of the bloody and fiendish work which followed. Indians and white men vied with each other in their efforts at wholesale murdering of over one hundred and twenty human beings, men, women and children, who had been disarmed and lured from their stronghold behind their wagons. You have heard the part which the prisoner played in this dread tragedy: how, it was said he shot one person with his gun, how he shot others with his pistol and cut the throat of another and told an Indian not to spare a woman's life, whom the

savage asked to have spared. It is for you to say whether the witnesses who stated these things told the truth, and it is for you to say whether, per the testimony, John. D. Lee, can be considered innocent. If there be any good reason for disbelieving the testimony given before you, then the defendant may be innocent, and it is for you upon your oath, to say whether any alleged fact is proven or not. But if you believe the testimony detailed by the various witnesses, then truly there is no escaping the conclusion that the prisoner is guilty. The testimony is overwhelming, and the human heart revolts at the fiendish cruelty displayed, and were it not for the requirements of justice, it should forever be sheltered in oblivion. But it was too horrible a deed to slumber forever, although for nineteen years, the perpetrators have gone unpunished. The defense has introduced no witnesses or evidence to refute the testimony for the prosecution, but risks the whole case upon the hope to shake your confidence in the witnesses for the prosecution. Were those witnesses unworthy of belief? The most

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that could be said is that the testimony of a portion of the witnesses, those who were participants in the massacre, should be taken with great caution, if uncorrobrated in any material point by other evidence. Were such parties unworthy of belief, the law would not allow them to be put upon the witness stand. The admission of accomplices is fully justified by the necessity of the case, and there was not and could not have been any objection to their introduction. Who else could tell what took place upon that bloody field but those who were present, willing or unwilling? After their introduction, you are to weigh their testimony and sift the truth therefrom. Accomplices are not to be disbelieved, simply because they were accomplices, but you are to weight their testimony in connection with the other evidence, and being corroborated in any material point by other evidence, their testimony is entirely sufficient to warrant a verdict in accordance therewith.

In regard to admission said to have been made by the prisoner, the rule of law