Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-02-20

pears to lis that all these grounds are
fallacious. There may be others set out
in the petition, which we have not seen,
but we can CONCEIVE of no others to be set
up, or of any that are defensible. James
Lansing was certainly doing no wrong. If
he advanced upon Raten, he had not only
the right to do so, but it was his duty, as
good citizen, to aid in his arrest That
Raten did not intend to kill James Lans
ing, with malice against that specific per-
son, may be true; but that he intended to
intimidate his pursuers, and to kill any
of them, if need be, is established
by his act, and that involved generalization
to do what he did do He must be held
to have intended to accomplish the
result of his act He fired his weapon to
iniure or to kill some one. 1t did kill,
and he thereby became a murderer. 1t is
no excuse whatever to say that he had
been wronged-that may be conceded for
the sake of argument-he had taken The
righting Of his supposed wrongs into his
own hands, and had attempted murder
upon the highway. He knew what he
was doing, for he fred with sufficient de
liberation at considerable distance,
and when he was not being as
saulted, and Immediately fed, seeking
to escape the result of his unlawful act.
The shooting at and killing of Lansing
was an incident of that fight. To say that
he did not intend to kill Lansing, and is
therefore innocent of that murder which
calls for the extreme penalty, is to set up
a doctrine, that, in our opinion, is utterly
destructive of the law, and that places the
lives of citizens at the mercy of any care
less or drunken wretch who seeks to escape
from arrest. Raten was convicted by a
jury OF the country that heard all
the facts, and had it in its power
to have saved his life, by itself fixing the
penalty at Imprisonment for life No
charge of the Court did, or could invade
this discretion Of the jury. 1t is a sacred
and impregnable privilege, that can
not even be called into question. That
jury, under the solemnity of the oath, re-
fused to rescue him from the gallows.
Possibly some OF the jurors signed the
petition for Communication of the sentence
If So that will be nothing new and will
only add another to the instances of men,
deliberately under oath doing their
duty, and subsequently in their individual
capacity yielding to other influences, and
stultifying themselves, for we do not I'M
derstand that any new facts have devel-
oped since the trial. We cannot con-
cede that the crime of Raten was
anything less than murder, or that
it morited any lesser punishment than
that Of the extreme penalty. If in law it
was not murder in the first degree the
fact should have developed on APP
peal. The Governor is probably for
tilted by such an array of petition
ers and opinions as to disarm criti-
cism in that quarter in large degree.
But that the petitioners entertained false
and dangerous views regarding the crime
of unlawful homicide, we maintain. In
the disposition to protect such criminals
from the result of their acts, is to be noted
tendency to relax legal restraints that
is dangerous to the peace and weIl-being
of society. This community has nothing
to congratulate itself upon in having pre-
vailed upoo the Governor; there is but
one man other than Raten who may be
congratulated in the matter, and that is
the Sheriff, who is saved the disagreeable
duty of breaking the neck of the murderer
of James Lansing.