Mr. Howard said to me about as follows & I replied about as I now give it. He said to me, “Judge, I have eaten dirt & have gone down out of sight in dirt & expect to eat more dirt, but I have done nothing wrong and all I ask of you is that you will not lose confidence in me but will give me a chance to show to the world that what I have done or may do is right, & I pledge you that I will leave no stone unturned to show who the instigators or promoters of the [sic] this Massacre were. Given me time only & I will show that my course has been proper &c.” I replied substantially as follows, “Well, Mr. Howard, I do not know what you have done or what you propose to do, but I will try to have confidence in you as you do not wrong but if you do any wrong or have done any, you cannot expect [me] to retain confidence in you. At the beginning of this (2d) trial, I noticed that Daniel H. Wells, first counsellor of Brigham Young, had come all [the] way from Salt Lake City to Beaver, and located himself in a place facing the jury so that the jury could see him. I did not know whether he was there on behalf of the defendant or of the prosecution. As the forming of the jury proceeded, I observed that Howard made no objections to the exclusion of Gentile jurors from the jury on motion of the defendants’ attorneys and seemed to be himself anxious to get Gentiles off of the panel. I felt that he did not know these people—that being a comparative stranger he was being misled & soon would be swamped in his efforts to convict Lee. The defense seemed in high spirits, believing, it seemed that if they got some Mormons on the jury, Lee would not be convicted. The defense believed as any body did that the Mormons would be for the acquittal of Lee, regardless of the evidence. When the jury was completed, it was composed wholly of Mormons and to my surprise the first witness of the Prosecution called to the witness stand was Daniel H. Wells, one of the First Presidency of the Mormon Church, he being the 1st Counselor of Brigham Young. No question of any importance was asked Wells, and when asked, their irrelevancy being apparent & manifest, I ruled them out on objections by the attorneys for the defendant. No doubt, however, that the placing of Wells on the witness stand, as I afterwards concluded, served Howard’s purpose, in his effort to let the jury see that the church was on the side of the prosecution. But when Howard got into the trial fully, he put forth witnesses that gave over whelming amount of testimony to the guilty of the defendant . . . The evidence at this second trial was far more abundant to warrant conviction—the Church had evidently loosened the tongues of the witnesses—guarding, however, to protect the heads of the church in detailing the evidence. Every one could see that the mouths of the witnesses had, in some way, been loosened. It began slowly to dawn upon the minds of the people that Howard had made some kind of deal with the heads of the church, whereby witnesses who had been in hiding were brought forth and their tongues loosened . . .