The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-08-28
THE YREKA LYNcHINGs.

When four men accused of murder
can be taken from jail and lynched, as
was done at Yreka, Cal, Monday last
it shows that something is radically
wrong. These lynchings occur all ovel
the country and seem rather to in
crease than to decrease. What is the
cause of this state of things? What is
the remedy? Every state in the Union
| has more or less elaborate system OF
criminal law with an abundance OF
| judicial machinery for carrying it out,
yet the law is continually set at de-
fiance and lawlessness, in the form of
popular vengeance, usurps its place.
These same lynchings show that the
people abhor the crimes which prompt
| them, and this adherence of them
| finds expression in our criminal stat
utes everywhere throughout the land.
Why, then, are not these statutes de-
pended upon to prevent these crimes
and punish them when committed? To
ask this question is to state the whole
problem. But the solution, who can
suggest it? We make no attempt to
suggest one, we merely indicate some
of the elements that go to make up
the problem. The first is a want of
faith on the part of the people in the
efficacy of the law to prevent the COM
mission of crime or punish it when
committed. Our criminal laws, and the
procedure under them, have been
fro, ,ad a-4n g.,
of society, but the administration of
them has made the protection of the
criminal their primary object. The re-
suit of this has been that the criminal,
of whose guilt there has been no
doubt, has been allowed to escape the
punishment he has so richly deserved
through technicalities whose sole use
is to cheat justice. These technicalities
are first taken advantage of to delay
trials, then to defeat verdicts. 1t has
come to be an almost recognized truth
that two mistrials make all the
chances in favor of an acquital on
third trial. or of no third trial at all.
Maudlin sentimentality and weak.
ened moral sense have been substitu-
ted for the legal maxim that every
man is to be presumed innocent until
proven guilty." Fine-spun theories of
insanity and the social adjustment of
the world are invoked, and too often
invoked with success, to show that the
red-handed murderer should not be
held responsible for the crime he has
committed after generalization and
malice aforethought. Judges allow too
many appeals where there is no rea-
sonable ground to suppose there has
been error in the proceedings, and all
because they desire to Shift the respon-
sibility that is theirs to other should
ers; while jurors demand a mathemat-
ical demonstration of guilt, and lack
ing the capacity to comprehend the
demonstration they demand, bring in
their cowardly verdicts of mot
guilty"
Another cause of the miscarriage of
justice and the rousing of that public
indignation which oft finds vent in
is the long time that men
charged with crime lie in prison before
they are indicted; the long time they
lie in prison after Indictment, before
conviction; the long time they lie in
prison after conviction and sentence
before the sentence of the law is exc
cuted upon them. The laws delay and
uncertainty is the great cause of the
lynchings that disgrace the land. The
laws delay is the criminals hope OF