The new daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1872-1873, 1873-02-04
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AN ADEQUATE JURY SYSTEM,
ETC. >/4M

It is fortunate thing that the at
teution of those who have some clear
idess upon the subject has been di
rected to Che imperfections of our
jury system and that they have
enough Of interest In the public
welfase 70 givs somewhat of their
tine and attention to the deyising of
needed amendments to the existing
crude laws relating to the same. It
10 simply preposterous that techni
calites should sd climber the machin-
cry of our Courts as that jury can,
not be obtained in q whole county to
give any and every case an impartial
trial. Where this sort of mishap
occurs it is evident that the law is
overveighted with bubbles and that
the practice verges toward pettifog
gerry. The material out of which
juries should mainly be made is dis
eliminating intelligence. What is
called bias is commonly nothing but
IN unwillingness upon the part of
the juror to acknowledge himself
without information or a sense OF
justice. The practice of the day is
overrun with the weeds and webs and
brambles of old law fictions-black
letter bosh and fustian, meaningless
when, viewed by the clear light OF
the present. But here is what is
mainly the matter: 1t is monstrons
absurdity to burden the Jurors mind
with the crushing, paralysing soph
istry that he is to twist his mind, by
an act of volition, into giving tech
meal, aw,shop belief to testimony
which he, in his own clear mind un,
vexed with vague ideas of law forms.
would not give a moments credit to.
There is not a living man, free from
the artificial and false surroundings
of the American juror who might or
should believe that Mrs. Fair was
anything in the world but murder
ing, black hearted hell-cat of a
strumpet who ought to have been
stamped to death and then kicked
overheard by Crittenden's son when
she killed that man in the presence
of his wife. There was not one Of
the jurors who acquitted that she
desperate but what, if he had been
one of . Vigilance Committee
would have voted to hang man for
half the crime that she perpetrated.
And yet there were found twelve
honest men capable Of being BAN
boozled out of their powers of dis
elimination far enough to let them
selves be persuaded that they must
believe o certain train of evidences:
which neither of them actually, Iii
his own individual mind really did
believe for O moment. A man is n t
a puppet when he becomes a Juror;
he is not obliged to give credence
to that which his reason rejects a.
untrue. And here is where the jury
system needs q new bottom. The
theory of the criminal practice, the
talue of testimony as against the
value of ratiocination is wrongly es-
timated and falsely weighed out to
the jurors mind; and competent
hands shonld delve down upon the
bed rock of common sense and make
the practice of the law in America
adapt itself thereto. It is folly to
accept, unquestioned the musty and
insuficiently Investigated theory of
legal action that the wisdom which
accumulated in the old courts Of
Great Britain was an infallible fore
thought of all conditions of law,
and covered all possible emergencies
in practice. Let us try in this day
and generation to shuttle off some of
the surrounding rubbish of old
technicalities and worm eaten the
cries OF the 1aw-for it must be, un
less hnman wisdom has exhausted
itself in one direction. that the spirit
of law itself is subject to the laws OF
progression.