The morning call., 1893-12-20
UNANIMOUS JURIES.

1t will now be interesting to observe
whether Judge Walace's vigorous condem-
nation OF the unanimous jury system in
criminal cases will have more weight with
the public aud the Legislature than pre-
vlous expressions of enlightened public
opinion had. For years men of intelli-
gence have agreed that the rule requiring
unaninoity on the part of the jury operated
10 defeat the ends of justice. 1t enabled
obviously guilty defendants to escape by
hanging the jury. 1t generated a breed OF
juTy-hxers. And yet the conservative in
stinct has been so stroug that in no State
i'll the Union has 1t been possible to effect
arefOrm which has long been in operation
on the Continent of Europe and whose
merits few lawyers of character now yen-
ture to dispute.
In the O'Neill case the crime was OBJ
viOAsly murder in the second degree. Sc
held eleven of the jurors, as indeed every
ONE who reads the evidence with an un-
biased mind must hold. Yet one juror in-
sisted on verdict of manslaughIer or a
disagreement, and to avoid derelction of
duty the eleven surrendered to one and
found verdict which assigns to this wan
ten and brutal murderer the mild penalty
of six and half years in prison. 1t Is i'm
POSSIBLE TO conceive a grOsser defeat of
Justice.
1t is incidents of this nature which
check the natural aversion of civilized
communities TO the operations of Judge
Lynch. People see that in a large pro-
portion of cases the punishment does not
fit the crime, but that. through legal chi
canery and the stupidity or worse of
jurors, scoundrels go unwhipt of justice,
and when a hotheaded mob gets hold of
rope and drag a murderer TO q telegraph
pole, honest men often turn their backs
and pretend to hear and see nothing.
Hence a reprOach of savagery is incurred
by community which does not deserve
it, There would be no excuse for lynch
ing If 1t were reasonably probable that
when a culprit was arrested the law could
be safely trusted TO take its course. 1t is
the law requiring twelve jurymen to agree
on a verdict which begets succession of
Judge Lynches.
There Is probably no section of the code
so fagrantIy illogical as the one which in
sists that in criminal cases juries must be
unanimous. Twelve men, picked out of
different strata of society. educated in
different schools, following different call
lngS, looking at events from different
staudpoints, are always liable TO differ in
opinion; when a question admitting of
doubt is submitted to them it is odds
that some will take one view and some
another. SO much is inevitable from the
varying qualities of their minds, even as
suming that all are honest aud all are In
telligent. Yet when society goes into bat
tie against a malefactor, the law not only
requires twelve jurors to agree upon his
guilt, but likewise insists that they shall
agree on the nature and degree of the guilt
Such preposterOus provision of law
might be understood in an age when GRIM
inal trials were generally contests between
a tyrannical sovereign and his victim.
When the defendant in criminal case was
oftener accused of treason than of offenses
against person or property, the unanimous
jury system was a natural device for the
protection of the innocent; but now it
lacks even a sem blance of excuse for its
survival.
We of the Anglo-Saxon race are nothing
if not conservatives. The old motto of tho
English bar0ns-We will not have the laws
of England changed-will answer for their
American descendants to-day. We see
wrong; We admit it; we deplore it; but
we refuse to cure it for fear of departing
from a system under which, on the whole,
society has fiourished. 1t is really wonder
full, considering our ingrained aversion to
reforms which are novelties. that we have
got over the habit of hanging, drawing
and quartering. and that we do not now
require prisoners in Jail 10 rely on the
charity Of passers-by for their daily food.