The record-union., 1893-12-15
THE CONVICTION OF EVANS.

Evans, the train robber and murderer.
has succeeded in getting off cheaply. The
jury before which he was tried has found
him guilty of murder in the first degree,
and fixed his punishment at imprison-
ment for life. This is within the province
of the jury, and it does not indicate any
doubt on the part of the jurors concern
ing his guilt. 1t simply testifes to the
unwillingness of this particular jury to
apply the law of capital punishment. So
far as Evans guilt is concerned that is
emphatically determined, as much so as
if the verdict had been accompanied by
direction to hang the prisoner.
1t is to be regretted that the jury was
opposed to the application of capital pun
ishment in this instance, for if ever there
was case in which it was justified it
was the Evans-Sontag case. Here were
men who. aping responsibility and
honesty in a large community, were
secretly the wreckers of trains and the
robbers of cars. When pursued, and the
officers attempted to arrest them, the
murderers fired upon the representatives
of the law, and killed as many as they
could
Arraigned to answer for his share in
the crime of murder, Evans had the
efrontery to set up the defense that the
0fficarS f rod ,,DoD him fret apd 4Lof ba
was therefore justified in returning the
fire and defending himself The shame
lessness of this infamous plea was intensi-
fed by the very considerable sentiment
that prevails in California that it was
good defense, an excusable one. We have
heard men in this community, reckoned
otherwise sensible and law-abiding, ask
"Shall not man defend himself when the
officers fire upon him, and shall he be held
guilty for so doing?" Emphatically yes,
and that there should be so much as the
shadow of doubt in the mind of any
man upon that subject, suggests the most
deplorable ignorance of the rights of men
and the safeguards of the law.
We recall an instance in this city a few
years ago. A man had attempted to shoot
another on the public street. Conscious
of mis- crime, he fed, pursued by excited
citizens seeking to capture him, as was
their right and their duty. Presently an
officer or two Joined in the pursuit, and
ID
still fed, however, and, while speeding
along an alleyway, citizen at work in his
yard, and not knowing what the noise
outside involved, opened the gate and
stepped into the alley, whereupon the
hunted criminal fired upon and killed
him.
Yet there was cultivated in this law
abiding community feeling in favor of
that murderer that resulted in a petition
for his pardon on the ground that he was
defending himself; that being pursued
and in danger he had the right to turn
upon his pursuers; that not having per-
sonal animosity against the murdered
ndu Ne Otu AOt 4AtSuo WdItOH1y 10 Kill
him, and that the whole thing was sim
ply unfortunate misadventure, growing
out of the fact that the murderer had the
night before been roundly thrasned in a
saloon fight, and had on his own
showing been refused warrant by the
police authorities for the arrest of his as
sailants, whereupon he fired up on liquor
and went upon the street searching for
his enemies. and thinking he had met
them, blazed away and the pursuit de-
scribed followed.
We say that some hundreds of people
were SO blind to their own right to life
and liberty, so obtuse as to the law of the
case and the reason of the law, and so
little impressed with the fact that the
mans crime was rank murder, as much
so as if he had plotted the killing of his
victim, that considerable sympathy was
enkindled, and it finally eliminated in a
petition for pardon.
Here in the Evans case the same plea
was set up Evans was simply defend
ing HIMSELF we are told. His duty as an
innocent man was to have surrendered to