New York, Saturday, August 21, 1858.
If there be one thing more than another on which we had fully made up our minds it is this: that our country is pre-eminently free—yea, the freest in the whole family of nations. But the history of the past week has taught us how very easily it is to be mistaken.
The trial of Stephen H. Branch in our Court of Sessions, a few days ago, teaches us a lesson which we ought not soon to forget. From the time that our great nabob, Mayor Tiemann, associated with the Peter Cooper guild, first made their complaint, or “Trinity” of complaints, down to the passing of the sentence in the Court of Sessions, the trial was one of the most vindictive and one-sided affair, on the part of the prosecution, that we recollect during our sojourn on this “miserable globe.”
In the first place, it was proved on the trial that one of the complainants, or more properly persecutors, had never been before the Grand Jury. In the second place, it would appear that indictments by the dozen must have been preferred against the accused; for if we recollect aright, he was arrested every day for nearly a fortnight, previous to his trial. And again we have been told—how far it is true we care not to inquire—that one man who professed great friendship for him, and became his bail on the last arrest, two days before his trial, on the following day withdrew his bail, and delivered the unfortunate man up to his adversaries; and in consequence of this latter act realised a contract from the city authorities. “Save us from our friends.”
If all this be true, it is one of the most arrant pieces of villany ever recorded of Christian men.
When we come into court we, unfortunately, if possible, find things worse. The ruling of the Judge was altogether too strict—too severe—in fact too arbitrary. The Judge, it appears to us, made it a point of his business to shield, as much as possible, the complainants on the one hand, by interfering in behalf of the Mayor, when he was being cross-questioned by defendant’s Counsel; whilst on the other hand he ruled out the principal evidence in support of the defendant, and of course deprived the accused of the slightest shadow of a chance to establish his innocence.
Then comes the Recorder’s charge to the Jury. And that we think is in keeping; or, perhaps, we ought to say an improvement on the spirit of the whole proceedings. Let any one sit down and read that charge calmly and dispassionately, and we venture to assert that for severity the reader cannot find a case to surpass it, nor perhaps even to equal it in the history of modern English jurisprudence.
Then, if we consider the hurried manner in which the prosecution got up this trial, and their mode of conducting it, as described above, we must consider the proceedings unwarranted by the premises; and forms a great contrast to the tardy manner in which our Courts mete out their infinitismal doses of punishment to Thieves, Burglars, Murderers and Desperadoes.
There is still another charge, which in our opinion is the gravest of all. After the rendition of the verdict the counsel for the defence moved a stay of proceedings; now mark the reply of his honor. That he had yesterday considered the possibility of such an application, and had THEN MADE UP HIS MIND that it could not be granted. So from this it would appear, that the whole affair was settled before the parties came into court; and so far as the trial goes, it was simply a collateral incident of the proceedings, and not at all an operation for attaining the great end of justice.
Now, we do not say a word as to the guilt or innocence of Mr. Branch. He may be guilty—he may be innocent; we are just as far, if not farther, from that point than we were a month ago; and this is the ground of our complaint.