The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-06-27

PooPAo - WAC ooAtu 10 get tOgetner In mass
convention, from which all diplomats and
politicians, foreign Ministers, Cabinet Minis.
ters, Secretaries Of State and Presidential
aspirants shall be religiously excluded. and
then and there to settle their differences make
their own treaty, and prepare the way for a
general millennium of universal peace and
good fellowship.
The Trial OF Stokes and It's Twelve
Blanks.
After seven days occupied in the selection
men whose minds were as nearly as
possible utter blanks, so far as knowledge of
the killing Of James Fisk, Jr., was concerned,
the trial Of Edward s. Stokes has been
entered on in earnest. The fact that it
required a panel seven hundred and fifty
strong from whom to select twelve men capable
of giving an impartial verdict on the case
would, of itself, go to show the absurdity of the
system by which the jury on q murder trial
has in these latter days come to be selected.
1t would seem from the figures in this farce
that only one in sixty-tw Of those summoned
could, with any regard to justice, be permitted
prisoner. In other words, that in cause
cflebre like the present one, out Of q thou
sand sane citizens only sixteen are fitted to be
jurymen. Under any other system than the
present one we should be inclined to mourn
over the degeneracy Of the American people at
such an exhibit; but when we consider that
every evidence of intellect is taken as test of
unftness, it makes us somewhat proud that the
proportion of born know-nothings is so small
One gentleman, indeed, among the twelve
seems to have asserted his intelligence, and by
q quiet insistance that it did not debar him
astonished the triers into accepting him. The
remainder appear, from their own account Of
retain On image, whose memories, in fact, are
defective, who hear without hearkening, read
without reasoning and see without observing.
Of all the awful and responsible positions in
which man may find himself none is more
so than that Of the juror on q murder trial.
Where keen-witted, quibbling lawyers are
ready with a thousand devices on either side
to befog the real point at issue, it need not be
said that it needs acute perception, retentive
memory, quick appreciation, and other quail
ties of high order of intelligence. Where
trial is prolonged over many days, and the
real gist of the evidence tangled up in techni-
calihes-medical, legal and logical-the
end of it must be that the know-nothing
juror becomes bewildered, and the
whole story takes confused form
in his brain, and leaves the verdict either
to haphazard or to the fortuitous stirring up
of his little emotional nature by the harangues
of counsel on one side or the other. This is
surely not the picture which the believers in
trial by jury would like to see stereotyped for
future generations. Although legislation has
attempted to remedy this error and to declare
that reading the papers Gan act performed by
every intelligent man and woman) should not
be sufficient to prevent citizen from talk
ing his place on jury, the evil
seems growing. A prisoner on this or
any other charge has q right to every safe
guard which the law throws around the uncon-
victed. Every man unreasonably prejudiced
should, as O matter of course, be excluded;
but when the prisoner, through his counsel,
seeks to eliminate intelligence from those who
are to make deliverance between him and
the law, is he acting wisely? However the
idea has obtained o footing, it is q vicious
one. Where, for instance, the prisoner is
innocent, with terribly linked direct and cir
cumstantial evidence against him, is it good
policy to have the delicate process of separating
the wheat of fact from the chaff Of damning
-, 1or 30 Of %ha n ~
mental ability? It is only when the befogging
process is desirable that there is any logic in
this mode of selection at all.
On the intellectual calibre Of the jurors In
the present trial we wish to make no reflection
save such as inheres from the conditions Of
their selection. They have a grave, solemn
duty before them, which it is our hope they
will perform with justice and impartiality
beyond what the restrictions of their choosing
would under ordinary circumstances warrant.
If the prisoner has gained anything in quiet
ing of popular sentiment by the long delay
we hope he will reap every advantage of it
The facts of the murder of James Fisk, on the
9th Of January last, are few but the sinister,
melo-dramatic surroundings which give their
peculiar color to it will, no doubt, wisely or
unwisely, be brought once more into the light
of day, and reclothe it with the feverish inter-
est it wore at the time when that luckless har-
lequin creature of changing fortunes reeled gid
Oily down the hotel stairs and lay bleeding
and gaspiny vainly for life on the floor.
Murder is murder, and be the victim
monarch or mountebank all that cries in fear
full tones to Heaven for justice or to the law
for revenge is the same. Whether the ac-
cused be social pariah or pet of the salon his
rights to fair trial are unaltered This is now
what is demanded at the hands Of Court and
and jury in the trial of Edward s. Stokes Let