Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-01-19

| mitted so as to embarrass a whole
County. Sir, what are we to do! Here
it may be man has entered your house,
robbed your Golfers, murdered YOU
family, and the proof is clear. Now
what has the man got to do as the law
now Isl He has got to stay in Jail anC
you go through the form of getting
jury and fail. He can stay in jail
twenty years and can not be tried; OF
you encounter. the other evil very much
to be deplored by all law and order men
that of society taking the law into theiI
| own hands. Now is there any injustice,
any inhumanity, where the whole county
panel is exhausted Every man has
been shown to have formed an opinion
which disqualifies him from sitting on q
jury-is there any harm at that point OF
time in the operation of law for a
change of Uente to another countye
1t seems to me that the argument is
good. Sir, has not society its rights
where its members have been outraged
where some fiend in human shape comes
forward and perpetrates diabOlical muir
der? Sir, such crimes have been committed.
have been stained with them. Has So
ciety no rights ? Is society to be put at
bayl Sir, the leaning of the profession
is more in the direction of tenderness to-
wards the client than towards the State.
But wish this provision in the organic
law to be so guarded as that no man can
be screened, but every man made answera-
BILE for his crimes. The sympathy we
have heard expressed here is misapplied !;
but l respect that sympathy. IwOuldnot
take away the last props that may sup
port the sinking fortunes of the prisoner;
but society must go upon its rights, and we
should provide against the encouragement
of mob riots.
MIR. House Of Montgomery should
be certainly unwilling that any amend
ment should be adopted into our Bill of
Rights which would leave the power I'M
restricted to the Legislature to provide
for change of venue by the State
l think that would be very dangerous,
and yet 1 am satisfied that something
ought to be done on this subject. | am
satisfied that our system will be vitally
defective if in this portion it should reach
point where its officers are stopped
short of proper execution of the laws
against crime. But now in what clause
of the Constitution should this arise? Why,
sir, against those crimes which are shock
ing to the moral sense of community.
But they are always disguised by who
ever becomes acquainted with them; and
the courts are unable to get a jury
because of the enormity of the offence
has carried the information of the crime
to every house and home. But it strikes
me that the amendment of the gentleman
from Davidson will be impracticable in
its operations. Take the county of David
son and undertake to exhaust every Jury
paneled, and how long would it take? 1t
seems to me that it would be entirely i'm
practicable. would stop short of that
and say three-fOurths of a panel. |
would make it obligatory upon the Judge
to make an honest effort for a jury to the
extent of three-fourths of the panel;
then if no jury could be found the prison
er should not fall back upon the right of
no jury, for as the gentleman remarked,
society has its rights, and the danger is
more in an improper and rigorous admin
istration of the law than in the exercise of
that improper sympathy through which
the criminal might escape the punishment
of his crime.
would put it into this Constitution
that under these certain circumstances
the Legislature may authorize the State
to change the venue. My friend from
Sumner said he had a case once where the
criminal was discharged, not because he
had not set at defiance all laws, human
and divine; but because of this defect in
our law, it was impossible to obtain a
jury for his trial.
Mr.. Stephens still stood for the prise
ner Gentlemen had looked at one state
of facts, and that is always that when a
man is charged with crime, it is held by
society that the man is guilty, but he did
not understand that to be either reason or
law, and if it was, when the public are
demanding the blood of a man, at that
very time, the lawyer, the statesman and
the judge ought TO stand for him.
He held that the Constitution ought to
be held up as shield for the individual
as against the power of the Government,
and not to enable the Government to
punish man right or wrong.
He held to the principle that it was
better for many guilty to escape than
for one innocent man to suffer. The
opinion of the gossipping public is not
worth a button: for we are always
itching after something to excite us, and
always eager when we hear that crime
has been committed to pronounce the
accused party guilty. But suppose all
the community is impressed with the
innocence of the man, and he desires
trial, then would you drag the man
away upon the affidavit of the Attorney
General, supported by the oath of two
loyal men, which the judge might say
should be sufficient to remove q man from
his home for trial
Would you take him away for his
trial among strangers, and perhaps for a
political offense This case was possible,
and we might give the power that would
bear him 500 miles away. He insisted that
it is the business of the organic law to pre-.
tect the weak. The strong do not need
protection. Of course there may be diff
ticulties about empanelling a jury-to find
men who have not in some shape or form
expressed an idle opinion, and we should
give little more discretion to the court as
to that
Mr.. Jones, of Giles, asked to be in
dulged but few minutes more, as to the
remark of his friend from Shelby in re-
gard to the rights of parties. The mean
ing, sir, of that great political maxim is
that a party shall not be dragged
across the seas, where he could not have
his witnesses; and in regard to the re-
mark as to the venerable character of this
right, he would say to the gentleman, that
this provision was in the Constitution of
96. Under one of the provisions in that
Constitution there was law passed by
which, if the Court could not obtain a
jury, he could be removed to an adjoining
county, and the Constitution of '34 con-
tanned the same elements. In 1867 a
law was passed, which remains now on
the statute books, giving the Courts the
power to change the venue when they
could not obtain jury in the county, and
that law has been continued by the Courts
for more than twenty years; and the
constitutional question was never raised
till 1869, in case in which you,
sir, and l were engaged. Then, sir,
for the first time it was decided
by the Supreme Court of Tennessee
that you could never change the venue but
by consent of the accused, and, as said be-
fore, in giving that decision, the Judge
suggested change in the constitutional
provision. Retain the provision as it is
now, and you will never see another Grim
inal tried where he thinks his life is in
peril
Mr.. Baxter recited a case in his own
practice in which there was failure to
h. OH