Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-04-21
PACKED IuRIEs.

IC 49, - Woc PAoSe A-BOooAOAS
to obtain an impartial jury in any case
where the itigants differed in politics.
The ingenuity of our lawyers was
sharpened to an extraordinary degree
to devise excuses for the delay of such
cases, as the only hope for justice lay
in delay till the State should be rid of
the Brownlow regime. This one fact
goes far toward explaining the i'm
mense accumulation of lawsuits still
pending, as well as the unusual
percentage of appeals to the
Supreme Court. The heavy dockets of
late years, with their heavy costs to the
State and people, are largely the result
Of Br~ownlowism and its packed juries,
breeding want of confidence on all
sides. Radicalism is the same every
where, and other Southern States are
still suffering from these evils. Asingle
paper, the aberdeen Miss Examiner
of April Is, gives two signal instances.
In the Circuit Courtof Noxubee county,
Judge Orr was obliged to quash two
successive Grand Juries as being
packed A more glaring ease is
quoted from the Daily V~ieks6argher, in
which a minority of SIX on the Grand
Jury for Warren county, ask to be dis
charged on the following grounds:
I'VE acknowledge with SORROW and
regret that our efforts for good are
powerless, as three-ffths of the grand
jury have, in the face of positive proof
and direct testimony, in the face Of
good counsel, instruction and advice Of
the District Attorney, refused to find
an indictment. With such we can no
longer serve, making your court afarce
and subjecting ourselves to the criti-
cism of an outraged community as be-
ing white-washed. The case % which
we particularly allude, we have the
written, sworn testimony by which
you may be convinced that we
are justified in this step, and tat
you may redress the wrong. The case,
which is fully proven, involves the
peace, the dignity and the morality of.
this community. In your charge to us
you referred to occasions, when the
people, ~despairing Of justice, rose in
their might and took the matter in
their own hands, abolishing, for the
time, both court and juries. We can
only add that when such positive
proofs of misdemeanors committed in
high Official circles, and by those who
are the guardians of our safety, are
thus ignored by those sworn to investi-
gate and true presentment make, that
in our opinion the time alluded to by
you has come"
The District Attorney explained to
the court that this jury, the majority
of which was evidently packed, "had
refused to find an indictment for a
crime committed against the laws of
the State, when before them, the testi-
mony of two witnesses proving the Of
tense and no circumstances tending to
show that they had told anything but
the truth" Judge Brown, in dis
solving the jury, remarked:
'Gentlemenof the Grand Jury: When
you were about being empannelled, l
took especial pains to examine eachone
of you upon your oaths, as to Your
qualification as a juryman. You each
swore you had no such interest in be-
half OF any one as would deter you IN
swiftly indicting for his offence any yiO-
latOr of the law. l am astonished and
shocked to learn from the statement Of
the District Attorney, and from com
munications received from your body,
that you have felt warranted in
lending yourselves rather to shield
crime and protect its perpetrators,
than to bring them before the law for
punishment. If you have erred III this
thing, 1t is more because you designed
to do so, than from want Of proper in
formation as to what the law and your
oaths required Of you. And Isay now,
what ] so cmphatically announced to
you in my charge, that if the people
find that crime cannot be punished
through the agencies fixed and estab-
lished by law, they will take its pun
ishment into their own hands, and the
juries of the country viii be response
bic for IT,"
Strong as this language is, it is but
a plain showing of how lax and corrupt
juries are responsible for social disor-
der and lynch law. The VicksbHrgher
explains that Judge BroEp is neither
reconstructed nor 'unrecOnstfucte0,1
being a Republican from the North
who never needed reconstruction. He
says distinctly: IF the people find
that crime cannot be punished through
the agencies fixed and established hy
law, they viii take its punishment into
their own hands, and the juries of the
country will be responsible" What a
terrible commentary on Republican
rule is this, when one Of tkeir W
Judges Indignantly discharges q jury
to screen high officials" and
iustifes in advance, and almoStinvites,
outraged people to take the law in
their own hands.
PNCHBAcK, who claims to be both
Senator and Representative from Lou