The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-11-29
A VICTORY FOR VICE.

Chief Justice Zane has prated sc
much about obedience to the laws,
and talked so loudly in the protested
interest of morality, that we have IN
clined to the belief that he entertained
an earnest desire to suppress vice and
punish the guilty. We knew that while
distorting the law and employing extra
ordinary methods to send men to the
Penitentiary for living with their wives
and supporting and educating their
children, he turned loose without pun
ishment a fellow who debauched his
wife's sister. We were also aware that
when a jury found dirty tramp guilty
of attempted rape on four-year-old
child His Honor set aside the verdict
and turned the fellow loose upon the
community. Yet he went on declaring
solenlnly and earnestly about the neces-1
sity of uphoIding the statutes, and IN
ficted upon all who came within the
sound of his voice moral lectures
about the ssnctity of the mar
rage VOW, and so on. And
we have hoped that he was not can't
ing hypocrite, but a person who enter
tanned a real horror of sexual sins and |
marital incontineRce. We certainly did |
not believe that after all his professions.
after all that he has said and done, be
would have the brazen effrontery, the
bold inconsistency to stand before the
community as the protector of the
Iecher and harlot, the defender of the
adulterer and the shield of the prosti-
tute. It occurs to the non-legal mind
that His Honor's opinion in the Van
dercOok habeas corpus case places him
in just the position noted as the one in
which We did not believe he would be
able to pose. An ordinance which has
been in the books for ten years, the
validity of which has never before been
called in question. though the convic-
lions under It have been numerous. he
declares is invalid in so far as it pro-
Vides for the punishment of those guilty
Of lewdness and prostitution, and upon
this holding snstches from the hands
Of the municipal court and releases
without reprimand a man accused of
a really greater immortality than anv
that Zane has encountered in his Judi
cial career in Utah. The awkwardness
Of His Honor's position viii cause him
to appear in terribly shocking attitude
before shat portion Of the public which
'egards sexual vices and incontinences.
y whomsOeVer committed, as offences I
Igainst good morals.
His HoRor's reasoning and language I
n this opinion are not marked by the {
learness chsracterizing most of his de. {
isiCns. Reading the opinion one gains t
be impression that the writer set out to q
each a conclusion by course of rea. a
Dning, and failing with his reasons, D
cached the conclusion nevertheless.
nearly verbatim report appears in
BE HsRALD this morning. The effect Is
it is something that all can under 3,
,and-the City cannot prosecute under o.
1t ordinance men for lewd ami lasci7.- cl
Is conduct. The moral portion OF the d,
viii feel outraged by the m
Onion, but Marshal Vandercook and re
hers entertaining his peculiar ideas CT
garding the association of the sexes n,
III be delighted with His Honor,s n
ling. 1t gives them the license of the
ederai Court as protection against
olestation in their immoraIities.