Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-03-30
TIE DUKES CASE AND TIE JURY
SYSTEM.

Under our jury system there is no
personal responsibility for verdict. The,
gravest of all our public charges is commit
ted to body of men from whose decision,
when it is for the defendant, there is no
effective appeal. The law of case may
be reviewed, even the verdict of fact, but
it cannot, in such cases, be set aside. These
considerations have, in the light of the
Dukes case, caused much comment. Here
was a man clearly guilty of murder he
had not even grain of public sympathy;
he violated the sacred laws of hospitality
openly and falsely boosted that he had
seduced the daughter of his most, wrote an
insolent letter describing his crime to her
father, charging her with being wanton
and advising him to criminally avoid his
childs shame. He refused to repair the
wrong he was guilty of by traducing the
girl, and when the parent called on him
in his anger and his agony. unarmed and
defenseless, he shot him down. A jury
found him not guilty. Even the Judge
from the bench felt called upon to express
his feelings Of horror at the verdict, and to
rebuke the jurors. The community in
which these twelve reside refuses to coun-
tensnce them, avoids and shames them in
the street, and has driven the defendant
with loathing and indignities from its
midst. The Legislature Of the State has
taken notice of the case and expressed its
abhorrencs of the man and his crime.
Both defendant and jurors are to-day out.
casts, and despised of all men. This is
probably the strongest case of the abuse of
the jurors privilege on record. 1t brings
out from a number of leading Eastern
Journals the expression that the criminal
law system should be radically reformed.
If, say they, the verdict is against the de-
PENDANT, on the merest technicality he may
appeal, and SO jealous is the law of the
life and liberty of the citizen that for any
material irregularisy a new trial will be
granted him. Why not then, when ver-
dict is plainly wrong, permit the State to
appeal and secure the award of new trial
So staid journal as the st. Louis Globe
Democrat is found, for these reasons,
warmly advocating the abandonment of the
principle of the law on which is based the
declaration that no man shall be second
time placed in jeopardy for the same Of
tense. That declaration was reached in the
evolution of civilization, just as was that
other, that the jury shall be the sole Judge
of the facts, and the Court of the law. To
abandon either now will be to read the les
sons of wisdom backward. and return to
the era when the accused had not even the
right to appear by counsel when the jury
was composed of witnesses when there
was no process for the summoning Of wit
nesses, and to the more remote time when
Jurors were fined by the Court or otherwise
punished if their verdict did not meet the
views of the Judges, as was done in the
case of William Penn, in 1910. who being
declared not guilty of crime in 'pTeach-
ing in the streets" the jurors were fined
20 marks each and sent to Newgate. On
the appeal of that case the decision was re-
yersed, and the great principle of the law
established that it is the right of the jury
to Judge of the evidence independent
of the Court. Since that time, al