[Richard]

From the October 1977 issue of American Heritage:

We have no information about the frustrated bard of a judge who composed this, or of the unfortunate José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales. We asked the editors of Antaeus magazine, in whose Autumn, 1976, issue we found the sentence, but they had no information other than that the case was United States of America v. Gonzales (1881), United States District Court, New Mexico Territory Sessions. We couldn’t find it, but perhaps some of our readers might know of it.

http://www.americanheritage.com/arti...10_print.shtml

Here's another good one:

Take, for example, a diatribe said to have been delivered by Judge M. B. Gerry when sentencing Alferd E. Packer to death for having killed and eaten five companions while caught in a Colorado blizzard in 1873. (See “Postscripts” for the April, 1977, issue.) “Stand up, you man-eating son-of-a-bitch, and receive your sentence!” Judge Gerry reportedly began. “There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, but you, you voracious, maneating son-of-a-bitch, you ate five of them. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you’re dead, dead, dead, as a warning against reducing the Democratic population of the state.”

We could use a few Alfred Packers in this country today.

Richard