Breckinridge County KyArchives Obituaries.....MILLER, James July 6, 1888
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Peggy Russell meemawpeg7@gmail.com July 22, 2020, 10:46 pm

Breckinridge News, Cloverport, Ky., September 4, 1889
(5)
Newspaper articles pertaining to the trial of former Judge Alanson Madison 
"Matt" (A. M.) PULLIAM, for murdering James MILLER in July 1888.

                       COMMENTS OF THE PRESS
                        THE PULLIAM VERDICT

     The jury that has been the fate of murderer Matt PULLIAM in its hands 
returned a verdict of Manslaughter this morning, and fixed the punishment at 
fifteen hears imprisonment in the penitentiary.  The verdict was another of 
those compromise affairs that have done so much to injure the administration of 
justice in Kentucky, and that are the direct result of the unfortunate system 
which places the punishment as well as the determination of guilt or innocence 
in the hands of the jury.  Judge PULLIAM was charged with murder in the first 
degree, and he was tried for this crime.  Yet under the Kentucky system of 
justice he was found guilty of manslaughter, and his punishment is affixed for 
a crime with which he was not charged.
     While it is probably a matter of congratulations that Judge PULLIAM was 
punished at all -- in Kentucky, -- The Post has been of the opinion all the 
time that he deserved the severest penalty under the law.  If the murder of his 
wife's seducer had been caused by the result of the outrage and anger which an 
injured husband is expected to feel in the presence of such a domestic calamity 
then the jury could have very properly acquitted him.  There is always an 
unwritten law which protects the man who does murder under such circumstances.
     But Judge PULLIAM'S crime was not of this class.  It was clearly shown by 
his own testimony that he undertook a cold blooded scheme to raise money from 
MILLER, and that if he had succeeded in doing so, MILLER would have gone forth 
unharmed.  Failing to get the money he desired for his wife's dishonor, he shot 
down his victim in cold blood.  This made the murder an unusually atrocious 
one, and worth of punishment with death.
     In New York, where the laws administered according to pure justice, 
without any adulteration of sentimentallity of mawkish clemency, the death 
sentence would have inevitably followed such a crime.  In Kentucky we must be 
very thankful to get as much of a punishment as fifteen years imprisonment.  
Life is very cheap in the good old Commonwealth, and it is the weak-kneed 
administration of justice that makes it so.  We can not hope for anything 
better until we get a new constitution and a new system of executing the laws -
-- Louisville Post.

                     BETTER THAN THE PUBLIC HOPED FOR
     Instead of getting $5,000 for his wife's virtue, ex-Judge PULLIAM gets 
fifteen years in the penitentiary.  This is better than the public hoped for, 
though the finding of the jury is without so much as a pretense of consistency.  
PULLIAM placed a pistol in his office and prepared in advance a written demand 
for $5,000 or the life of the alleged seducer of Mrs. PULLIAM.  He seems to 
have been arraigned under both the human law and "the higher law", and should 
either have been acquitted under the latter or hanged under the former.  
Probably the jury were brought under a spell by the many "able efforts" of the 
numerous attorneys.  There is some satisfaction to be derived from the fact 
that the accused wife has passed through the ordeal in much better shape than 
her accuser. --- Louisville Times

 







Additional Comments:
#0242 Miller Cemetery #3, located off Highway 992, near west Hardinsburg, in 
Breckinridge County, Ky.

MILLER, James  13 Nov 1831 -- 06 Jul 1888
UNKNOWN IF HE EVER MARRIED
son of Matthias MILLER, Sr. & Isabel HOWARD
have articles from the trial for the man who murdered James MILLER
he has a tombstone

HIS PARENTS ARE ALSO HERE:
MILLER, Matthias, Sr.  11 Jan 1790 -- 12 Oct 1876
husband of Isabel HOWARD
parents unknown
he has a tombstone

MILLER, Isabel  1801 -- 28 Apr 1862
wife of Matthias MILLER, Sr.
parents unknown
she has a tombstone
Dana Brown & Peggy Russell
 

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