Pryal

This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction in a proceeding against the defendant for a criminal libel. The alleged libel consisted in the writing of a letter by the defendant to one Isabel Abbott, containing a charge of forgery against one John A. Sands, consisting of the statement that “Sands forged both Mrs. Pryal’s and my name to certain legal documents.”

Upon the trial of the case the defendant Pryal not only made no effort to prove the truth of this assertion, but expressly admitted, and upon this appeal concedes, that the charge of forgery was untrue. The defendant, however, upon the trial undertook to offer in evidence a large number of documents, including certain letters which had passed be tween himself and said Sands while the latter was acting as his attorney in a certain litigation, which letters and documents the defendant contended were admissible as tending to show his intention in uttering this libel, and as proving that it was published with good motives and justifiable ends. The court ruled out this evidence; and it is this ruling of the court that the defendant now chiefly relies upon as error requiring a reversal upon this appeal.

We think the trial…