The southern press., 1851-07-19
From the Nero York Journal of Commerce.
Abuse Of Witnesses.

There is probably no evil connected with the
administration of law in our criminal courts
which calls more loudly for redress than the Sc
verify and injustice visited upon the heads of in
nocent persons who are detained as witnesses.
Our grand jury have several times called at
tention to the subject, but NO measure of relief
has yet been adopted. MeH who are innocent
of any fault but that of having been involuntary
spectators of other mems crimes, are herded to-
gether in our prisons with common felons, liv-
ing on the same fare, occupying similar cells,
who are to be brought to justice by their testi
mony. Instances are not rare where strangers,
visiting the city upon business, have been seized
upon by the police, because they happened to
be passing at the moment where some scene oil
violence was enacted, and not being able to
give bail for their appearance at court as wit
nesses, have been hurried off to the lookup
there to langniah in solitnde or foulssocirty
until The real culprits could be brought to trial
1t would be WE'LL now that public atteation
has, by the action of the grand jury, been turned
to this subject, if all the systems of abuse Of
witnesses now in vogue could be essentially
modified. A person is dragged to court against
his will, to secure the punishment of a criminal,
or perhaps, more frequently, to give testimony
in civil suit 1t would be natural to suppose
that one who had thus been compelled, at con-
siderable personal inconvenience to attend to
duty so onerous, would be treated with at
least ordinary civility and respect. But this is
not generally the case. After being sworn to
tell the truth, he is beset by several sharp prac-
titioners who have made this business study,
and who use the most despotic efforts to befog
his intellect, to confound his ideas, to perplex
his memory, and, if possible, to betray him into
unintenti0ndl error.
If, in such hands, he becomes so ioorried as 10
utter seeming contradictions, he is dashed without
mercy as perjurer Or If, after spending all
their impotence upon him-after browbeating
and torturing him TO their hearts content-the
lawyers are unable to puzzle him, and still ad
heres to his simple story, mark the seeming ma.
lightly with which he is assailed in the advo-
Gates argument Ifo,o his motives are impeached,
his character criticised or biackened, his most
cred feelings ridiculed until he seems monster too
pile to be beliered. We have known some esti-
mable men of sensitive minds who have not re-
covered for weeks from an attack of this sort,
made by a skilful speaker, without shadow of
excuse for it, save in his anxiety to sustain a
sinking cause.
If any one thinks this picture oyerdrawn, let
him visit for day almost any of our trial courts.
There are one or two where the judges occa-
sionally interpose in favor of respectable wit.
ness, but in most Of them the lawyers have free
license to utter the most scandalous abuse with
out check or hindrance. All this seems to us to
be wrong in principle, and productive of serious
evil in practice. 1t heightens the difficulty Of
procuring the attendance of respectable wit
nesses, as few are willing to submit to such
wholesale abuse. It lessons the dignity of the
judiciary, and tends to impair the force of any
rebuke administered to wrong doing, BY bring.
ing the innocent and guilty alike into condem
nation.