In France, we pay a legion—a host rather—of judges and police officers, to look after our security, and never should we dream of helping them in the exercise of their functions. If a crime remain wrapped in mystery, we say to ourselves: "I pay the police, it is for them to discover the criminal; it is not my business, and, besides, the profession of detective is not in my line."
It is not the same in the United States. There public safety concerns everyone.
The population of a town feels dishonoured by the perpetration of a crime in their midst. Everyone is on the alert to catch the criminal; men organise themselves into bands to search the country round. An assassin is tracked in the woods with bloodhounds and guns, like a wild beast; if he is discovered, and offers a very obstinate resistance, a bullet is lodged in his body, and the hunters go tranquilly home again.
When a crime has produced a violent sensation in a town and it is feared the criminal may not be judged there with impartiality, he is taken to a distance, out of the way of prejudices, to be tried.
This is a curious contrast with lynch law, of which I shall speak in another chapter.
Something else to admire.
In England and France, a jury only pronounces upon the innocence or guilt of the accused. In England, a jury has not even, as it has in France, the right to admit extenuating circumstances. English and French juries are often astounded when they hear the judge pronounce sentence. Their intention was to get the accused sent to prison for a year or two, and the judge gives him, perhaps, ten years' penal servitude.
In cases of assassination in England, the clerk of the court says to the jury, at the end of their sitting: