3895. Blackfoot State Bank (Blackfoot, ID)

Article Text

AN EMBEZZLEMENT CASE DISMISSED The case of the state against D. R. Jones on the charge of embezzlement which has occupied a place on the calendar of this county for several years, was dismissed this week on the motion of the prosecuting attorney. The case has been fought with great bitterness on both sides. to The prosecuting attorney trying establish a new point in such matters few and failing after expending a thousand dollars of the public funds. The history of the case is briefly as follows: D. R. Jones was the cashier of the Blackfoot State Bank, and as such official passed upon and granted many loans that the rules of safe The banking would have denied. board of directors became inattentive indifferent or perhaps disgusted with or the way things were going, and more of the responsibility fell upon Jones. The panic of 1907 came on, and the bank was in hard straits. Jones visited some of the cities and arranged money matters so that he could pull the bank out of its straits, tided it over the panic and after year or two it was closed by the bank examiner, V. P. Platt, who was an ardent Domocrat and it was said, was unduly ardent in making victims of Republicans in the banking business. True it is that he closed some banks that were conducted by men who were active in Republican for politics, and made such a record himself that when Governor Haines demanded his resignation he resigned to without delay, but took occasion slur the governor in so doing. When the Blackfoot State Bank failed, Jones owed the bank some him$2,700 which he had loaned to self, and on turning over the institution to examiner Platt, he called attention to his own ledger account and said he would get some money together and settle in a week or two. He raised a thousand dollars in short time and paid it on the account and said he would need more time to get the rest together and offered to give his notes for the remain- seting $1600, which was accepted in tlement of the account. Later, Prosecuting Attorney Good brought a criminal charge against Lim, claiming embezzlement, and the Jones and his attorneys set up defense that Jones simply owed the bank $1600, and that it was not If a crime to be in debt to a bank. it was the whole population were criminals. Jones had not been conservative in his business methods, neither had hundreds of others, but he had always paid, and would be aple to pay this. The case was tried in the district court and the jury failed to agree. It was tried again and he was pronounced guilty, there being some inside history connected with the trial that would make startling reading, but we are not in a position to make it public. The case was carried to the supreme court on appeal, and that tribunal set aside the findings of the district court, and said in effect that whatever else Jones might have been guilty of, he was not an embezzler under the law. The case was argued before the supreme court by G. F. Hansbrough of Blackfoot and D. C. McDougal of Pocatello, and the point upon which the decision hinged was that when the examiner accepted Jones' thousand dollars and his note, it placed the matter upon a simple business plane of the bank having a bill against Jones for money and of accepting an ordinary bus'ness settlement; of them breaking faith in such settlement and keeping his note and his money and attempting to inflict a penalty besides. Jones haa a nice home on East Idaho street, and various pieces of property aggregating considerable value, and owed a few bills besides the one at the bank but none of them large amounts. The fight in the courts and the entanglement into which it threw his business, broke him up, and he is down and out and discouraged, and, we understand is working for wages at Ogden or Malad.