120 Years Ago, 1905 transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

“Harbison is a free man. Verdict was not guilty. The jurors spent almost nine hours in deliberation. Nerve of a stoic displayed by the prisoner when the finding was read. He will leave the city. Declares he feels no enmity toward anyone — received a fair trial — his statement.”

“Verdict. Court of Common Pleas, Mahoning County, Ohio. September Term, A. D. 1905. The State of Ohio, vs. James I. Harbison, indicted for murder in the first degree. We, the jury in this case, find the defendant, James I. Harbison, not guilty, in manner and form as he stands charged in the indictment. Charles Decker, Foreman. Dated November 25, 1905.

“After almost nine hours’ deliberation the jury in the Harbison case returned the above verdict into court at 2 o’clock this morning. It was five minutes of 1 when the decision was reached that gave back to the accused his liberty and his life, but it was an hour later that everything was in readiness for the final act in the drama that has occupied the attention of the court for almost two weeks….

“The crime for which James Ivy Harbison was put on trial is still fresh in the minds of Youngstown people. On the night of July third last he went to his home on Belmont Avenue, and shot and instantly killed Louis V. Bergman whom he found in a bedroom with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Harbison had been separated for many weeks.

“Mrs. Harbison on April 29 having filed a divorce petition which was subsequently withdrawn. On June 15 Harbison and his wife entered into a contract of separation, by the terms of which he gave to his wife $500 in cash, all the household furniture and agreed to make further payments of $20 a month. There was evidence at the trial that on the afternoon of the third of July Mrs. Harbison invited her husband to call at the Belmont Avenue home that evening. He went and the tragedy followed.

“Bergman was shot four times, one of the balls from the revolver passing through his heart, causing instant death. Harbison made no attempt to escape, but waited until the police officers arrived, when he gave himself up. He stated that he thought the man he had shot was Peter Laughlin and said if he had killed him it would have been the happiest hour of his life. There had been more than one sensational episode in which Laughlin and the wife of the young man figured.

“Harbison was confined in the county jail, and on September 30 the grand jury returned and indictment charging him with murder in the first degree. He was subsequently arraigned and entered a plea of not guilty. The trial, which was one of the most sensational and bitterly contested in the history of Mahoning County, closed yesterday afternoon, and just before 2 o’clock this morning the verdict of not guilty was announced….

“Probably there was never a more striking exhibition of gratitude for a service than that shown by James I. Harbison last night just after the verdict of acquittal had been brought in. Immediately after the discharge of the prisoner, as the men who had waited for the verdict were crowding around the young man to offer congratulations. Harbison threw his arms around Mr. Anderson and kissed him on the cheek. The incident, simple in itself perhaps better than anything else illustrates the state of the late prisoner’s mind at that moment.”

• Compiled by Dante Bernard, museum educator at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society