State v. Pierson

The grand jury of the city of St. Louis on April 4, 1930, returned an indictment against appellant, Ralph Pierson, and Lewis E. Balson, Andrew B. Meadows and Robert II. Cotham, jointly charging them with murder in the first degree committed on December 5, 1927, in the perpetration of an arson. The specifications of the charge were that the four accused men set fire to the Buckingham Hotel Annex. No. 4954 West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis, and that as a result May Frazer, a guest in the Annex, was burned to death. At the request of appellant, Pierson, he was granted a severance. Upon trial he was…