This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/zcB.2ACI/866.2 Message Board Post: Edward Turk was acquitted on charges of first-degree murder in the 1869shooting of John A. Sims in an Albany saloon. According to the States Rights Democrat animosity had built up between Sims and Turk for several weeks. The day of the shooting Sims had been drinking, and announced to witnesses that he would make Turk “get down on his knees and take back some things he had said, or he should die before midnight.” That afternoon Sims spent time practicing with a revolver. Upon entering the saloon, where Turk was apparently working, he informed the owner William Gird that he intended to force “a d—d son of a b---h in this house” to apologize on his knees or he’d kill him or be killed by him, while prominently displaying his revolver belt. Turks and Sims traded heated words and Sims place a hand on his holstered pistol, taking a step backwards. Edward Turk responded by commanding Sims to draw and fired several times. John Si! ms collapsed his own gun in hand. Afterwards, Edward Turk left the saloon but surrendered voluntarily to the Linn County sheriff shortly after thee shooting. The jury ruled it self-defense and a justifiable homicide, although in a letter to States Rights Democrat, Sims’ father-in-law James P. Schooling critized the newspaper coverage of the trial as incomplete and misleading.