McCook weekly tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 188?-1886, 1884-04-17

loose without punishment for it, con-
slider themselves as becoming charter
ed murderers, and laugh at courts and
law Other cities and counties have
had the same experience, and it is said
to be true that three-fourths OF the
men who have committed murder in
Iowa in the past twenty years are now
at large.
This is the fly in the ointment. It is
not more law that is needed. II is the
more certain enforcement of the law
we have. Public sentiment is the
power to change the situation. AS it
Is the sentiment goes too often with the
murderer, and the best of lawyers will
hire out to the worst of murdG rers, not
to see that he has fair trial and a fair
show, but to resort to every device, fair
and otherwise, to clear him entirely.
According to the maxim of the law and
the proverb of the profession, as it used
to be, lawyer is an officer of the court,
to aid it in administering justice. Now
many of the best lawyers sell them
selves to the worst of murderers to help
deceive the court and to cheat justice,
and to encourage and multiply crime.
Crime always has money and always
has good lawyers. The people elect
too often weak men to prosecute.
Juries are packed in the face of the
court. The murderer's family are
dramatically paraded before them as a
device to supplant judgment with SYM
pathy, and too frequently court, jury
and all 60 off in tears atthe sight, for
getting justice, forgetting the rights of
society, and forgetting also the far
more injured family of the man muir
dered.
The drift among lawyers in the
United States for the last fifty years has
been to take the most money that can
be had to hire them to trick the courts
into wrong and TO cheat the people out
of justice. We need to go back to the
old-fashioned way of abhorring murder
and loathing murderers, and to 60
back to the days when no lawyer, how
eyer great of well paid, could make q
hero out of Il murderer. With this,
and strong men elected to the bench,
and Judge who will carry out the law
and compel the best men in the COM
munity to serve on juries, the good
work will be done, the law enforced,
the punishment applied, and crime
punished.
If it is not done trouble is to come to
every place as it has already come in
Cincinnati. More than majority of
the communities in the United States
are ripening into the same feeling
which broke into fire and blood so fero-
ciously at Cincinnati. This is true of
Iowa. In this state murder is not pun
ished, and crime is increasing, and hu-
man life is very cheap, and no one feels
the security of the law, and it may be
said that now in this state if the courts
shall repeat the past ears and clear
the most of the murderers or give them
light sentences, there will be trouble
here. For his honor, Judge Lynch, will
set up his gallows, and punish the
criminals which the courts of the state
have shown for twenty years that they
will not punish. Society has never
given up wholly its right to protect it.
self, and cannot do so. 1t has put the
power of protection partially in the
hands of the courts. But if they shall
persist in making murder popular, as
they have too largely done for twenty
years, society will take the power back
into its own hands, and clear Iowa air
of all this namby-pambyism which has
made murder the safest of all crimes to
commit in the state.