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The dump where Pearl Daniels went to salvage discarded toys to raise her son’s defense fund has been closed to her now. A municipal order has gone up to barge from taking anything out of the trash Americans discard so But it doesn’t really matter too much because—hope has all but been closed to Pearl Daniels anyway. The mountain she has been whittling at by rummaging for toys she can refurbish has grown too large for her to tackle in that way. She had thought the mountain was going to be only $400 high— $400 she was expected to rai:e to hire independent chiatrists to examine the son who has been ask away by the court without how she finds that the mountain will probably be $3,000 high. Such a mountain as ‘that can’t be whit tled by a few dollars earned in selling scrap, in making quilts,in foregoing the use of a car, and in making new again someone's dis carded toys. Jesse Waits Meanwhile, Jesse Daniels, her son, awaits word from her, that the day is here when she will clear his name, and set him free. He waits for that trial he has never had—the trial that will prove what he adamantly claims is his innocence in a rape case two years old. The news Pearl Daniels receiv ed the other day was in the form of a letter from the attorney who had been working on the case. Previously, he had assured her that the main objective was the for the psychiatrist fees— the necessary amount for an ex amination that the parents of Jese fully expect will show that he was not capable of committing that alleged crime of rape back in December, 1957. Now, however, the attorney says the amount needed will be about $3,000. Now he says he will have to are an associate; that there wa ave i be an investigator pro mysterious case ‘said her attack the woman or was a Negro, but the law de scended on white Jesse Daniels, a mentally-retarded white boy. Leesburg Helps a Little Pearl Daniels hasn’t any means like that, of course. Her World War I veteran husband, Charles, gets only a small pension. Their only other income is the work she can do to help supply the family’s needs. Some kind Leesburg citi zens have given her money to help build the defense fund—for the feeling is strong in Leesburg that Jesse Daniels is innocent. In anguish, she has tried to sell the modest little home they own —or at least get a loan on it. But it still has a mortgage, and there have been no buyers. And in deeper anguish, she wrote the attorney: “We are poor, and poorly educated, it is true, and we know little about law. But I do know how hard I have work ed, and begged for the little I’ve already sent you _ “Where is Justice?” And in another letter, the an guish spilled out: “What are we to do??? Poor Charles now is cast down and even more sick ever. Where is justice? No proof has ever been given that our son is guilty—yet we are supposed to raise $3,000 to prove that he is innocent! Is this what makes peo ce steal or commit sinful acts? Is our American law— where is it for the poor?” So it really doesn’t matter that
Newspaper Details
Mount Dora Topic
Mount Dora, Florida, US
Thu, Jan 21, 1960
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Katie W.
