The Memphis appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1886-1890, 1886-02-26
Judge Reid's DecIsiOB The Lease
system and Treatment OF Con-

matriculants this year.
Judge Reid's DecIsiOD The Lease
System and Treatment OF Con-
vlcts.
Nashville Banner: Judge Reid, in
deciding the E. H. johnson habeas
corpus case yesterday, said regarding
the lease system and treatment OF
convicte:
"About the time this Legislature
convened, or shortly thereafter, q trial
was in progress in the Criminal Court
of this county that revealed the con-
Wet lease system, under it's mar age
ment in this State, in colore go horrl--
BILE that all believers in the God OF the
Bible must have wondered, with
trembling and fear, why He who, in
olden time, had consumed Sodom and
Gomorrah with the fires of his wrath,
had go long stayed his hand against
the people Of this commonwealth.
"fhe proposition that the Legisla-
tuYe-that branch of the government
that builds the prisone, that prescribes
the rules and regulations under which
they shall be managed, that provides
for the appointment of the officers to
be placed in charge of the PRISONS
has not the power to abolish bad sys-
m, or such murderous one as in this
State, il the report of the Committee
on Prisons, from which l have quoted.
is true, and replace it with a better
one, il thereby one iot or one title OF
the rigor of the sentence under which
the prit oner is held is abated, to my
mind is unspeakably monstrous. Yet
that proposition is maintained by sew
eral Of the courts of last resort in this
country.
"The truth is, the moment the de-
PENDANT is sentenced and turned over
to the officers appointed by the Legis:.
lsture to receive him, the duties and
with them the jurisdiction OF the III
dicial department in his case. are at
an end, and he becomes ward OF the
Legislature, snd as such it owes to
him the performance OF the same
character Of duty that it owes TO the
lunatics in the State asylum, or TO the
blind and deaf and dumb thrown upon
it's charge. Every consideration OF
public policy, even excluding, II 1t can
be done, from the meaning OF that
term of morality and religion, demands
that the human being shall not be
sunk out OF view in the convict, de-
mands that he shall still be recognized
as a child Of the commonwealth, and
while made to feel the punishment Of
violated law, yet so made 10 feel il
a. to insure his restoration to
society an honest, law-abiding citi-
zen.. The assertion that the Legisla-
ture has not the power 10 enact laws
designed and calculated to produce
this end, because their operation
would abridge or abolish "the period
of the defendent's sentence" and
thus "modify or reverse judicial de-
cree" and so interfere with the judi
ciary," can secure the support Of none
but dry. asdust ease lawyers"
81 know that a statute may be con-
ditional, and its taking effect may be
made to depend upon some subse-
quent event, as might have been the
case with the statute under consider
alton had not the last section been
ATTACHED to it. But that section ex-
pressly enscts that the act shall have
the force and effect Of law, and ehsll
operate as such from and after its
passage, and so, being the last ex-
preston of the legislative will, re-
vokes the former sectiO ,, making the
operation OF the act depend upon the
consent of the lessses, or else Gus
pending it until the expiration Of
the present lease. l think that any
careful reader of the act must be
convinced that the expunging OF this
clause, making the operation OF the
act t. depend upon the consent Of the
lessees, restores it to the shape snd
condition it most likely had as first
fashioned by the hand of its author.
The clause referred TO was evidently
Inserted in the act after it had been
drafted, and, doubtless, by reason of
the suggestion, perhaps, from some
interested source, that without such q
clause the act would impair the obli-
hgation Of the contract between the
State and the lessees, and, therefore,
be unconstitutional and SO, to save It
from that fate, the obnoxious clause
vac infrndurRd infoitn