Indicted

"The public has overwhelmingly rendered its verdict of acquittal and exoneration," announced the attorney for the defense last week, which was six weeks before the trial. Of course he referred to Parson Norris, the Fort Worth Baptist who shot a man for remonstrating with him about attacks on his fellowtownsmen (TIME, July 26).

The district attorney, R. K. Hanger, announced that Dr. Norris, like any other Texas indictee; will receive acquittal, a minimum of two years for manslaughter, or the maximum of death in the electric chair, depending on how the twelve good Texas jurymen decide.

The attorney for the state conjured 14-year-old Carl Glaze as his mystery witness, and according to the prosecutors, gazing Glaze has seen sufficient to wreck the Parson's plea of self-defense. Dr. Norris is the potent medicine-man of the Texas Fundamentalists. With the aid of the Ku Klux, who he claims have rallied to his cause, he may get off easily. But some, who do not take Dr. Norris' medicine, hope District Attorney Hanger lives up to his name.

With a loud rumbling whirling between their ears, last Sunday 63 humble faithfuls groped to the pulpit where Revivalist Norris campaigned for converts. Dr. Norris leaped to the floor from his rostrum and embraced them. (On the Sunday following his killing of Mr. Chipps he salvaged only five). Dr. Norris prefaced his sermon with an appeal for funds to aid in fighting his case. Members showered over $25,000 upon the man who slew, he said, in self defense. Dr. Norris is as unswervable as the flood of Genesis in his self defense plea, announcing that "here and now I serve notice on Satan and all others that I will not retract. . . ."

Rev. Norris' text was "How God gave answer to a conspiracy", in which he tear-wringingly described how three of God's faithful were victimized by Conspirator Nebuchadnezzar and cast into a fiery furnace, but how God delivered them from their persecuting flames. (Pastor Norris speaks often of a Catholic conspiracy against him). Ominously one Lloyd P. Bloodworth, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, rumbled fervent amens from the front row.