We published in our January number the first of a series of stories by
Herbert D. Ward, in which Mr. Ward will exhibit in dramatic form some
monstrous imperfections in the present modes of judicial procedure.
That there is great need of such a study is shown by the remarkable
effect produced by the story already published, "The Silent Witness."
In various parts of the country the press has taken particular notice
of the story and of the question with which it deals. A recent
number of "The Argus," Avoca, Pennsylvania, contained the following
editorial:
"JUSTICE, WHERE ART THOU?"
"'The Silent Witness,' a powerful story in McCLURE's MAGAZINE for
January, portrays in a graphic and thrilling manner the evil, which
in some cases amounts almost to a horror, of holding in confinement
witnesses in cases of capital crime who are unable to furnish bail.
"The story tells of a young and stalwart country lad who goes to
Boston in search of fortune, and on the night of his arrival, while
wandering about in quest of lodgings to suit his scanty purse, is the
unwilling witness of a murder.
"He is arrested and held in the city jail to await the trial of the
murderer.
"The news of his imprisonment reaches his widow mother up among the
New Hampshire hills. She knows nothing of the circumstances further
than the rumors brought to her by her country neighbors. She dies of a
broken heart, though never doubting the innocence of her noble-hearted
boy.
"The unfortunate young man learns of her death through his sweetheart,
who comes to the Boston prison to see him.
"His grief is beyond endurance, and he curses the law that forces such
suffering upon the innocent. He has brain fever, and when the case
is called several months after the incarceration, the sheriff, who is
asked to produce the only witness for the commonwealth, responds that
he died that morning.
"The murderer, a saloon-keeper and ward man, has been at liberty under
bail during the time that the innocent witness has been suffering the
untold agony experienced by one who comes with spotless character
from green fields and rural simplicity to the company of felons in a
wretched cell. There being no witnesses against him at the trial, a
_nolle prosequi_ is found, and he goes free.
"This story is fiction, but it is not overdrawn. Such horrible things
do happen in these _fin-de-siècle_ days in a civilized country.
"In Scranton, only this week, a woman, Mrs. Nicotera, was released
after having been in custody since February 28th last, as a witness in
the Rosa murder case. She was confined with, her husband, who was also
a witness, in the Lackawanna county jail until her health broke down,
when she was removed to the Lackawanna hospital.
"On Tuesday she was released on her own recognizance. Her husband had
been given his liberty in a similar manner some weeks before. She was
thin and pale when she appeared in court, and had evidently passed
through severe suffering. Careful nursing will be required to restore
her to health.
"It would seem as if some means of meeting the ends of justice could
be devised without the necessity of subjecting innocent persons to a
felon's fate for simply being a chance witness of an affair that is to
be brought into the court."
In the editorial columns of a recent number of the Cleveland, Ohio,
"World" appeared the following:
"A DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION."
"A heart-breaking story, founded on fact, in McCLURE's MAGAZINE
for the current month, is an arraignment of the nineteenth century
civilization that, considering its boasts of enlightenment and
decency, is as horrible an official crime as any that has given so
dark a stain to Russian treatment of innocence."
Following this is a long outline of Mr. Ward's story, and then the
article continues:
"It is impossible to conceive of more awful inhuman injustice than
this. But the story is not overdrawn. It has happened with variations
scores, if not hundreds, of times. It is occurring or liable to occur
this very day, not alone in Boston, but in Cleveland.
"At a meeting of the judges, a short time ago, Judge Lamson used the
following language:
"'The detention of innocent persons as witnesses is, under the best
of circumstances, bad. It is clearly the duty of the people of this
country or their representatives to see that the present disgraceful
method in vogue in the county jail is abolished. We have no right,
under any law, to place innocent persons on a plane with criminals. It
is nothing more or less than an outrage, inflicted on helpless people.
I hope that the people of this county will be aroused to the enormity
of this problem, and very soon put an end to this imposition.'
"And the counterpart of the story in McCLURE's MAGAZINE has happened
here within a short time. Lewis Gerardin, a sailor, was released last
April, after being detained six months. Several months before, Frank
Blaha, a saloon-keeper, who committed the crime of murder in the
second degree, managed to get bail. While Gerardin was held he
received pathetic letters from his wife and family begging him to come
home. They did not know why he was held, and he said that if they were
to learn of his imprisonment they could not understand his innocence
of crime. One day a letter was received from home, announcing that his
favorite little son had died but a week before. The last words of the
child called for his father. But Gerardin was not released until the
prosecutor was ready to dismiss him.
"Such possibilities are a disgrace to any community that tolerates
such a horrible law or such a feeble administration of it, and such
callousness to human suffering that it will not save these innocent
victims from its outrageous injustice. When to this brutality are
added the comparative safety of the criminal, and the vile jails and
the vile inmates with whom young boys and girls and honest men and
decent women are thrown for the crime of witnessing a crime, it
convicts the civilization of the age with a combination of stupidity
and heartlessness that had better say nothing of the Czar of Russia or
the ferocious Kurds. In its essential injustice and inhumanity it is
not many removes from the lynchings of the South."