TWO KINDS OF LAWLESSNESS.
A mob in Cincinnati, involving the loss of many lives and much property in a three days’ reign of terror, has added another to a long list of warnings that the criminal administration of this country needs a thorough-going reform. The popular indignation which expressed itself at Cincinnati has been growing slowly into steady strength for thirty years and more. About 1845, gangs of horse thieves in northern Illinois were broken up—the law having failed—by regulators composed of the best citizens, who summarily hanged the thieves. About ten years later this history was repeated in Cedar and Linn counties, Iowa. These are two incidents among many of like type. Most readers know the history of the vigilance committee in San Francisco. The criminal administration having utterly failed, the best citizens organized themselves outside of the law and by vigorous and summary punishment restored the supremacy of the law. The mobbing of the “Dukes jury” at Uniontown is a still fresh event. In New York City, a few years ago, a citizen was brutally murdered in a public place, and the murderer, when arrested, said: “Hanging is played out.” The remark roused public feeling and refreshed the courage of the courts so that for some time hanging became the certain punishment of wilful murder. But in New York City, it is the press which really administers criminal law—by compelling the courts to do their duty. In the Cincinnati case, the last of a series of miscarriages of justice was the convicting of manslaughter in a case where wilful and mean-motived murder had been proved. The judge commented harshly upon the verdict. A public meeting listened to appropriately animated addresses, and passed strong resolutions of condemnation of the jury in that case, and of the criminal administration of the city. The excitable elements of the audience broke up there to reorganize in an assault on the jail. They were joined by a baser element, and a reign of terror followed.
The criminal system of the entire country is defective. It is not a terror to evil-doers. It tortures the conscience and the self respect of honest men. It has rendered human life much more insecure than private property. It is on the average safer to kill a man after robbing him than to rob him only. The match that lighted the Cincinnati conflagration was a murder done for the sake of robbery, and punished as if it had been robbery.
Our evils in this branch of justice are several distinct fungus growths of demoralized customs. A murder trial seldom ends within a year of the discovery of the criminal; it often ends twice as long after the arrest of the murderer. In England, three months suffices for the same work. There is no civilized country except our own where these long delays are tolerated. This is the safest country in the world for a murderer to carry on his profession. He is less likely to be arrested; he is not tried until the general public has forgotten his crime. When he comes to the dock, if he has money, or friends possessed of money, he can buy out the law by employing some member of a class of lawyers who make a profitable industry of defeating the aims of public justice. In the Cincinnati case, the judge said, courageously, that the murderer had been cleared of that crime because his friends had six or seven thousand dollars to fee criminal lawyers with. It is almost a rule that if the murderer has money, his cunning lawyers will delay trial, destroy testimony, and confuse the jury, or bribe the jury. If these fail, and there is money left, motions for new trials will be pressed upon judges, and perhaps secured by fictitious testimony. The motto of a murderer may well be: “While there is money there is hope.” It is plain to all intelligent persons that the law’s delay, under the influence of money, has become intolerable. We do hang the poor; we seldom hang the men who can command money. There ought to be a more summary procedure. There ought to be more pure discretion—unhampered by precedent—vested in judges. These interminable delays ought to be impossible without the connivance of the judges.
The power of money in criminal trials is a feature of the jury system as we manage it. In some states a man who knows what is going on in the world about him can not be admitted to serve on a jury. He has heard of the case and formed an opinion. Every intelligent man does that in a case of murder. This leaves jury duty to professional jurors, and to the least intelligent citizens. Worse still, on the plea of business duties intelligent men evade service on juries. In New York City, last year, a ring of “jury fixers” was discovered. They had hundreds, probably thousands, of customers—consisting of business men—who paid from ten to fifty dollars a year to have “things fixed” so that they should not be called on jury service. The men who thus bought themselves off from a civil duty were so numerous that even the press evaded the duty of vigorously exposing the crime. The men who are left, in large cities, to serve on juries, are men whose judgments can be involved in confusion by an artful plea; often, too, their verdicts can be bought with money. The city demoralization is gradually extending to the country. We must reform. We are nearing the end of popular patience. People begin to demand that they shall not be murdered with impunity. Get better juries; or amend the constitution and abolish juries. Give judges more power over the criminal lawyers, and more real discretion in refusing delays that defeat the ends of justice. Give judges to understand that we want more speedy trials and more direct methods of trial. Ask for reform—imperatively, emphatically—and reform will come. The lawlessness of court proceedings keeps within the forms of law; but it has become an ally of that other lawlessness which murders men, women and children—and gives its ally comparative impunity.