The Law’s Delay.
It was confidently expected that a revision of the judgment upon Mr. Branch would have been had in the early part of this week. We, however, learn from Mr. Ashmead, that the Court being pre-occupied by civil business, have postponed consideration of his motion until the month of September, when the learned counsellor feels assured that the relief he prays for will be granted, and a new trial be had.
In this sacrifice of personal rights to the emolument of that of property, we notice the inconsistency of the law which thus creates an invidious distinction between things animate and inanimate. Here, then, we have a person kept in jail, in a state of vexatious misery, while the Court is occupied by the consideration of some quarrel of Smith and Jones over a bale of cotton, or some other triviality in a commercial point of view. Now, the most valuable of all rights is that of locomotion, and the dearest of all writs is that of habeas corpus, instituted expressly for the relief of the individual from unjust detention. And still all the provisions of this famous act are neutralized the instant the prisoner gets into the clutches of the judiciary, whose slow motions are too often a cause of unintentional wrong-doing.
In the case of the People vs. Haines, the prisoner served his time out in the State Prison, and was afterward granted a new trial and found not guilty. Ashley, tried for forgery, served eighteen months, when upon a new trial he was found guiltless of the crime charged upon him. Much as we talk about the freedom of our institutions, the rights of prisoners are too little respected by the tardy process of legal procedure. We trust that when the new constitution be framed that preference will be given to all cases involving personal liberty.