In the interests of society it is requisite that crimes of this nature should not go unpunished.
The very least to be expected, if a member of a community, fall by the hands of an assassin, is that every means should be taken to bring the offender to justice; and when his guilt is established, death should follow as a natural consequence.
It is by the reliability only, and undeviating certainity that punishment follows conviction, that we can hope that it will act as a deterrent from the commission of crime.
But of late years the current seems to have been running in an opposite direction.
There has been a tendency on the part of a certain section of society to make heroes or martyrs of those whose infamous crimes have caused them to be condemned by a jury of their countrymen.
But too frequently every possible excuse is offered for the guilty man, no matter what the enormity of his crime might have been. There are, therefore, a thousand chances of escape.
Sometimes there is an informality in the indictment—as in the case of Charlotte Winslow, the wholesale child murderess; and owing to the ridiculous blunder she escaped.
In other cases there is a doubt about certain evidence being admissible; attorneys wrangle during the magisterial examinations, which, in most cases, are of an unnecessary length. Witnesses are bullied, all sorts of irrelevant and impertinent questions are asked them by some audacious legal gentleman who thinks it a fine thing to become the champion of a prisoner who is perhaps a disgrace to the name of man.
Everything that is possible for the most ingenious advocate to suggest to turn aside the sword of justice is not wanting, and even after the jury have delivered their verdict and the judge has passed sentence on the prisoner, a knot of busy bodies write letters to the newspapers for the purpose of impugning the judgment of both judge and jury, and the case has to be reconsidered or retried at the Home Office.
These irrational and illogical people are to be found everywhere, and there are some who take a delight in piling stumbling blocks in the way to impede the course of justice from the sheer spirit of opposition, and being different to other persons.