The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-02-10
"LAME AND IMPOTENT."

THE HERALD publishes the United States
statute to show what o1fenses committed by
soldiers are punishable by the civil courts.
They are as follows: When accused of cap
ital crime or any offense against the person or
property of any citizen of the United States,
which IS punishable by the laws OF the land"
But it also provides that for the latter offenSes,
that is, against the person or property of a
citizen of the United States, the person injured
must make application for the arrest of the
Observation-Disclosures.
The law we quoted, in one section reads
as follows:
Where the party is charged with mere
breach of the peace or other disorder in viola
ton OF local ordinance, bylaw, or police reg
ulation, he may legally be forthwith arrested
and proceeded against by the civil authorities,
without any such formal application as is con
templated by the article.
And with these words before him the
flame and impotent' scribe stated once
more that the police and the civil courts
were guilty of wrong in arresting a
soldier until the person wronged had made
application for the arrest of the offender.
| The ''lame and impotent" scribe having
smut his eyes to this quotation, then pro-
ceeds to berate TIE HERALD for saying
Colonel MORROW was wrong in battering
down prison door and taking a prioner
thence by force, simply because he was a
soldier and had violated only city ordi-
nance. We did not say MORROW was
wrong, but the law said so. Neither did
we, on the other ground upon which the
organ berates US, say mexican was in error
in deciding that city ordinances are not
laws Of the land and soldier cannot be
punished by the civil authorities for violat-
ing them; but the Judge advocate said he
was in error, in these plain words:
This case, however is regarded as going too
far in holding that though a soldier may, with,
out application TO the military authorities, be
arrested and detained by the civil authorities, for
the violation of city ordinance, he may not be
tried or punished for The latter, but for that pur
pose he must be surrendered to the military
commander.
Unless the offense of such a soldier directly
prejudiced military discipline, he could not be
tried at all for the same by military court
and if it did, he would be triable only for the
breach of discipline, leaving him still amenaple
to the local law for the civil disorder.
The quarrel of the "lame and impotent'
Tribune is thus not with The HERALD, bu
with the law as laid down in the forty
ninth article of war, and with the judge
advocate of the United States, who ha!
authoritatively eXpounded it, in the words
above quoted.
Further than this, we have no interest il
the matter In most respects Colonel Nor
ROW was a tirst-class officer, notwithstand
ing the serious blunder he made in employ
ing the military to break upon a jail AM
take forcibly a prisoner from the civi
authorities in time of peace. But the reade
will observe that it is this blemish upon a.
otherwise good record that the Tribune say
should ''be embossed upon his headston
to his everlasting honor" and that it is tn
law that condemns it and not this paper, a
: the organic concern tries to make appear