A mob in Cincinnati, involving the loss of many lives and much property
in a three days’ reign of terror, has added another to a long list
of warnings that the criminal administration of this country needs a
thorough-going reform. The popular indignation which expressed itself
at Cincinnati has been growing slowly into steady strength for thirty
years and more. About 1845, gangs of horse thieves in northern Illinois
were broken up—the law having failed—by regulators composed of the best
citizens, who summarily hanged the thieves. About ten years later this
history was repeated in Cedar and Linn counties, Iowa. These are two
incidents among many of like type. Most readers know the history of the
vigilance committee in San Francisco. The criminal administration having
utterly failed, the best citizens organized themselves outside of the
law and by vigorous and summary punishment restored the supremacy of the
law. The mobbing of the “Dukes jury” at Uniontown is a still fresh event.
In New York City, a few years ago, a citizen was brutally murdered in a
public place, and the murderer, when arrested, said: “Hanging is played
out.” The remark roused public feeling and refreshed the courage of
the courts so that for some time hanging became the certain punishment
of wilful murder. But in New York City, it is the press which really
administers criminal law—by compelling the courts to do their duty. In
the Cincinnati case, the last of a series of miscarriages of justice was
the convicting of manslaughter in a case where wilful and mean-motived
murder had been proved. The judge commented harshly upon the verdict. A
public meeting listened to appropriately animated addresses, and passed
strong resolutions of condemnation of the jury in that case, and of
the criminal administration of the city. The excitable elements of the
audience broke up there to reorganize in an assault on the jail. They
were joined by a baser element, and a reign of terror followed.
The criminal system of the entire country is defective. It is not a
terror to evil-doers. It tortures the conscience and the self respect of
honest men. It has rendered human life much more insecure than private
property. It is on the average safer to kill a man after robbing him than
to rob him only. The match that lighted the Cincinnati conflagration was
a murder done for the sake of robbery, and punished as if it had been
robbery.
Our evils in this branch of justice are several distinct fungus growths
of demoralized customs. A murder trial seldom ends within a year of the
discovery of the criminal; it often ends twice as long after the arrest
of the murderer. In England, three months suffices for the same work.
There is no civilized country except our own where these long delays
are tolerated. This is the safest country in the world for a murderer
to carry on his profession. He is less likely to be arrested; he is not
tried until the general public has forgotten his crime. When he comes
to the dock, _if he has money_, or friends possessed of money, he can
buy out the law by employing some member of a class of lawyers who
make a profitable industry of defeating the aims of public justice. In
the Cincinnati case, the judge said, courageously, that the murderer
had been cleared of that crime because _his friends had six or seven
thousand dollars to fee criminal lawyers with_. It is almost a rule
that if the murderer has money, his cunning lawyers will delay trial,
destroy testimony, and confuse the jury, or bribe the jury. If these
fail, and there is money left, motions for new trials will be pressed
upon judges, and perhaps secured by fictitious testimony. The motto of a
murderer may well be: “While there is money there is hope.” It is plain
to all intelligent persons that the law’s delay, under the influence of
money, has become intolerable. We do hang the poor; we seldom hang the
men who can command money. There ought to be a more summary procedure.
There ought to be more pure discretion—unhampered by precedent—vested
in judges. These interminable delays ought to be impossible without the
connivance of the judges.
The power of money in criminal trials is a feature of the jury system
_as we manage it_. In some states a man who knows what is going on in
the world about him can not be admitted to serve on a jury. He has heard
of the case and formed an opinion. Every intelligent man does that in
a case of murder. This leaves jury duty to professional jurors, and to
the least intelligent citizens. Worse still, on the plea of business
duties intelligent men evade service on juries. In New York City, last
year, a ring of “jury fixers” was discovered. They had hundreds, probably
thousands, of customers—consisting of business men—who paid from ten
to fifty dollars a year to have “things fixed” so that they should not
be called on jury service. The men who thus bought themselves off from
a civil duty were so numerous that even the press evaded the duty of
vigorously exposing the crime. The men who are left, in large cities, to
serve on juries, are men whose judgments can be involved in confusion
by an artful plea; often, too, their verdicts can be bought with money.
The city demoralization is gradually extending to the country. _We
must reform._ We are nearing the end of popular patience. People begin
to demand that they shall not be murdered with impunity. Get better
juries; or amend the constitution and abolish juries. Give judges more
power over the criminal lawyers, and more real discretion in refusing
delays that defeat the ends of justice. Give judges to understand that
we want more speedy trials and more direct methods of trial. Ask for
reform—imperatively, emphatically—and reform will come. The lawlessness
of court proceedings keeps within the forms of law; but it has become an
ally of that other lawlessness which murders men, women and children—and
gives its ally comparative impunity.