FALLEN IN THE STREETS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 31, 1879

FALLEN IN THE STREETS.

Just before the time when there is to be no intercessor, when it is no longer of any use to offer mercy to man, and probation closes, the prophet complains that “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.” Isa. 59: 14. The following is the description which the Inter-Ocean of July 16, 1879, gives of the judicial laxness which prevails in our courts of justice to-day. It may well call it “a perilous state of things.” We call it a fulfillment of this prophecy. We extract from an article headed, “A Sample Case”:—

“When a man commits a cold-blooded and unprovoked murder, what is the programme, provided money can be obtained to employ eminent counsel?

“First there is, as in this case, a continuance, or perhaps two or three of them, provided they are desired by the defendant. Time softens crime as it does grief, and after a year or so has elapsed, it seems much more cruel and heartless to hang a man than in the earlier days of his crime, when the fresh blood of his victim cries for vengeance. These continuances are granted almost invariably in murder cases, and in almost every instance where the object of the prisoner is well known to be delay simply, and not to secure absent evidence or a fair hearing of his case.

“As a second preparation, the counsel go to work to invent some plausible pretense for the murder; and though the victim may be an entire stranger to the murderer, and have never spoken a word to him, there will be devised some provocation or insult on his part which it is alleged threw the prisoner into a paroxysm of passion. If the circumstances are such that no provocation can possibly be shown, then the insanity dodge comes in. A few days ago a young man belonging to one of the “first families” of Georgia, got drunk and went out on the street with a shot gun, bent on killing somebody. While a couple of acquaintances were parleying with him, assuring him that they were his friends, and ought not to be killed, a stranger came along and was immediately halted. He begged for his life, but the young gentleman insisted upon killing him, and did so. For hours afterward this brute marched the streets, threatening the lives of the people and keeping the town in a state of terror, and finally went away without arrest. The public is assured that he is a “very estimable young man when he is sober”; that his friends are rallying around him, and it is perfectly safe to say that he will never meet with punishment.

“But a murderer having been brought to trial at last, the farce begins in earnest. Witnesses are reviled, abused, insulted; and all the while the judge, who has been placed on the bench to execute the law, sits calmly by and permits the scandalous travesty to go on. A case which a day should abundantly suffice to try is made to occupy a fortnight; the jury, which has just been selected from persons who do not read and never have any opinions of their own, are worried and bewildered and cajoled until they know little or nothing about the real evidence in the case, and finally, on the principle that it is better that one hundred guilty men escape than that one innocent suffer, they bring in a verdict of acquittal or administer some slight punishment, and the case is ended. If by some accident a verdict of guilty is rendered, then come new trials and supersedeas, until justice retires beaten and discouraged.

“Such is the criminal jurisprudence of this country to-day, and it is a perilous condition of things. There comes a time when people become restive under such conditions, and take the law into their own hands. Once started in this direction, it is hard to stop the tide which sets in toward barbarism. Respect for law dies, and though punishment may at first be administered only where it is richly merited, it is not long till suspicion alone answers for proven guilt, and vengeance descends cruelly, unjustly, and without reason.”