KALLOCH ACQUITTED by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1881

KALLOCH ACQUITTED.

By Editor

AFTER an unusually long trial in a San Francisco court, the jury pronounced I. M. Kalloch not guilty of the murder of Charles de Young. Not satisfied with this travesty of justice, the friends of Kalloch took the horses from the hack in which he was riding to his home, and attaching a long rope, drew the hack themselves, with acclamations of triumph. The papers of the country, east and west, speak of the transaction in terms of the deepest condemnation, and as a disgrace to San Francisco. It is a triumph of the same element by the aid of which Denis Kearney held the city in dread for so many months. There was not the shadow of an excuse for this shooting on the ground of avenging the assault made on the elder Kalloch, as De Young's trial for that was set for the week following his death.

We think the present jury system is utterly at fault, by which people who have intelligence sufficient to read the papers are rejected from service. An upright, intelligent citizen, who has carefully read every word which has been published in the newspapers, may be the best prepared to analyze the evidence, and give a verdict according to the facts presented in court.

But words are idle now. The deed is done, and its influence upon society in its estimate of the value of human life it is impossible to stay. We have been able to maintain a calm complacency over the whole transaction by reading the 37th Psalm.