Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-11-07

| up the strangers, and put al
end to their barbarities- L
was question as to who should suffer
honest people or robbers.
1t is questionable whether what ha:
been accustomed to be called reform, as
regards the penal code has not been car
ried too far The line has been crossed
whenever the law is made so weak tina,
its penalties become a subject of con
tempt on the part of the criminal classes.
This has happened whenever the death
| penalty has been abolished. In this state
since capital punishment was practically
done away with, the spectacle has more
than once been witnessed of cruel muir
derers, men who have with savage de-
liberation waylaid and slain helpless
victims for paltry sum OF money, gong
away to the penitentiary with laugh
and congratulatlng themselves that their
comfortable future was provided for.
| To the consideration here presented
that the death penalty is the only pun
| ishment commensurate to the crime OF
willful murder, may be added that II
this punishment is not inflicted no other
| will likely be. The first popular
impulse is the direction of con-
dign justice. 1t may be said that
the voice of innocent blood freshly shed
| crying from the ground is heard. But
the lapse of time is always II favor OF
the criminal. The populace feel very
different toward such one after con-
viction than before. The very same per-
son who would have shouted on the
mob at the death of his victim are then
willing to garland his cell with flowers.
The innocent and helpless victim is
buried out of sight, and it would seem
out of mind: the details of the crime are
forgotten, crowded out of public recol
lection perhaps by the occurrence of
other crimes. The petition for pardon
is met by no remonstrance. Many ex-
tenuating circumstances are pleaded.
The prosecuting attorney, it may be, who
invoked the justice of man on the head
of the guilty murderer, signs the petit
ton for his release. More than this, the
excellent conduct of the murderer him.
self while in confinement, is urged in his
behalf, and the executive is besought to
extend his clemency to wretch who
ruthlessly steeled his heart to pity and
stuffed the cry of his victim for mercy in
blood, because he has be-
come a shining Christian since.
The appeal is heard, and even
where no pretense of extenuating cir
cumstance and no plea of possible inno-
cence is set up, the murderer steps forth
from his prison house free man, after
few years or months have passed, while
the man convicted at the same term of
court as himself, of the larceny of a
horse or other property, pines on In pris-
on to the uttermost day of his sentence.
While this happens within the forms
of law, and with, apparently, the popu-
lar consent, it does not satisfy the true
idea of Justice. The great mass Of law
abiding people regard the whole proceed
ure as miscarriage of justice. The re-
peated escape of murderers from punish
ment gives ground for great part
of the burden of complaint against
the law, it's administration and its adj
ministrators. 1t is for this cause that
men say that offense's gilded hand is
thrust by justice.
The venerable David Dudley Field, at
the recent meeting of the American Bar
association, affirmed that behind our
boasting of the great things we have ac-
complished and are doing there stands a
spectre of hating justice, such as is to be
seen in no other part of Chrlstendom.
There is no other country calling itself
civilized, he goes on to say, where 1t
takes so long to punish a criminal and
SO many years to get final decision be-
tween man and man.
1t should be the end of those who
make the law to satisfy that general idea
of Justice, which may be said to be COM
mon to the mass of law-abiding people.
Who believes that the worst punishment
that should be visited upon the cruel
murderer should be TO provide him a
comfortable home, warm clothing and
medical attention if he be sick, and rid
him of all anxiety about provision for
his old age? Would that have been, in
the opinion of the people of the United
States, fit and sufficient penalty in the
case or Guiteau, most worthless of man
KIND, who cowardly slew the president
of the United States; who took, without
a shadow of provocation, life dear to
millions; who robbed wife Of hus-
band and children of father, an old
mother of a darling son, and nation OF
its illustrious chief? And yet GrIteau
was simply murderer, and what was
Justice IN MS case is neither more or less
than Justice in the case of any other
man equally guilty OF what the law de-
fines as murder in the first de-
gree. What would be the peo-
pies verdict In the case of
a criminal, whose trade was robbery,
who. armed and ready to add murder TO
robbery, stole into a peaceful home in
the heart of a city, where husband and
wife and little children were sleeping in
fancied security, with neighbors and
friends all about them, and when inter- |
rupted in his purpose of theft by the |
father reused by what he thought was
the movement of his child in sleep, |
cruelty and fatally shot him down, and |
then attempted to kill the mother, who /
came to his defense: What would good |
men and women say was justice in the |
case of that robber and murderer: Every /
reader of this paper in Kansas will re-
member what was melted out in Topeka /
to Oliphant, who did this wicked deed. He /
was hung by the neck until he was dead, /
with the people of the whole city as wit |
ness; yet Oliphant was no more a MUIR
lerer than many aqually guilty now In I
.he Kansas penitentiary, who have been
sentenced to death and who through the
aw of 1872, have escaped it.
The law protects property. Nobody
seems DESTROYS to weaken any of the
statutory safeguards which have been
brown around goods and chatties. The
aw should throw around human life
hat safeguard which IN all ages and
Countries has been deemed essential. Ex-
)erience has proven that all attemps TO
10 away with the old statute have
proved unsuccessful. States which have
4 !