Sentenced to death.
--In the C. S. District Court, Saturday, J. D. Halyburton, Judge; P. H. Aylett. District Attorney; John Richardson, alias John Richards, alias Louis Napoleon, was arraigned for sentence for stealing, forging and passing Confederate Treasury notes. The prisoner was led to the bar of the court by Marshal J. F. Wiley, for sentence, when Mr. John H. Gilmer, counsel for the defence, moved for a new trial, which motion was argued at length by Mr. P. H. Aylett, District Attorney, and Mr. Gilmer, and resulted in the overruling of the motion by the Judge. Nothing then being offered in delay of judgment, the court pronounced sentence that the prisoner be taken to the usual place of execution, on the 9th of next May, and hung by the neck until dead. The scene in the court-room was an impressive one. The solemnity of the occasion seemed to be realized in all its force by the Judge and all who were present. The sentence was clothed in dignified yet pathetic language — the enormity of the crime set forth, and the awful sentence of death dwelt upon as an overpowering appeal to prepare for it. This is, we believe, the first time that such a sentence for such an offence has ever been pronounced. Some persons of over refined sensibility will doubtless consider it too severe, and rank forgery among the minor offences. But this is no common forgery. In this instance not one individual, not one corporation is injured; but a whole nation is threatened with destruction by the doubt which the discovery of one forged note throws around its whole, its only currency. Let the public confidence in these Treasury notes be shaken, and the whole Confederacy would crumble away as the baseless fabric of a dream.For the man Richardson, with his many aliases, there need be no sympathy, for two reasons: In the first place, because it is useless, for he will certainly be hung and secondly, because he was a doubly dyed scoundrel, skulking out of the service of the only land that ever gave him more than enough to keep life in him, by urging the pleas that he belonged to Italy; and, worse still, striking at the very vitals of the Confederacy by forging that which is the only pay which she can give to her soldiers and creditors.
Richardson is an Italian, of bad countenance, dissolute habits, and until recently was the proprietor of a little confectionary, as a blind for the illicit sale of poisonous liquors in the rear.
