Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1895-12-04
ARIZONA JOURNAL-MINER
WEDNESDAY .......DEC. i, 1895
WHAT ARIznNA NEEDS.

nant at Judge Hawkins for his re- cent sentence of the murderer, Ho- bart. The defendant plead guilty. and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Gazette only knows, in a general way, the history of the crime, and we believe it to have been most shocking murder, without a particle of Justl- fcstion, yet 1t Is fair to presume the judge kaew best the nature of the crime. But the papers inslnua-
 tions that Arizona and the east are justified in characterizing Arizona as a country where justice goes un- whipped, is indefensible. Arizona has less crime to the population
 than almost any state in the Union,
 and justice, as a rule, IS meted out to its law breakers. The Gazette
 believes in putting the man with the pistol beyond the danger line, and while we repeat we are not
 familiar with the case referred to,
 yet Arizona, like all other law abld-
 ing countries, should act promptly
 in dealing out justice to the man who takes human life"
 The above semi-apologetic, semi critical homily is taken from the
 Gazette. It is decidedly English,
 "dontcherkDow," being "af and 'af,
 half censure, half praise-half criti'
 cism, half apology. If the editor of the Gazette had read the newspaper
 accounts of Hobart's crime, in either of the Prescott papers, he would have learned the precise nature of it, as it was so diabolieal in its con ception, so cold blooded, wanton and brutal in its execution, that there was not the least palliation, or even the shadow of a mitigating circumstance for it. The victim was absolutely inoffensive and harmless, a man of so modest and retiring a disposition, that he would scarcely talk to a man, much less provoke a quarrel.
 After committing the dastardly murder, he mounted a horse, Win chester in hand, and attempted to escape, and when overtaken by the sheriff and ordered to throw up his hands, pulled his Winchester on the officer, and only when shot and dis abled by a deputy sheriff, did he surrender.
 So much for the information of the editor of the Gazette, and the world at large in regard to the nature of the crime for which Judge Hawkins imposed life sentence on the criminal, and which, according to past experience, means an average term of less than five years.
 Now, as to the assertions of the Gazette that "Arizona has less crime to the population than almost any state in the Union, and justice, as a rule, is meted out to its law break CTS" Now, there is no one in the territory who knows better than the editor of the Gazette, that this double assertion is absolutely untrue. He has lived here long enough and has had sufficient experience and observation, to know better than that. He ought to know, too, that just so long as apologies are made for judges, juries and chief executives for the respective parts acted in freeing criminals, just so long will Pilgrims on the GiIa," and articles of a similar i'm port continue. Our esteemed con- temporary, the Gazette, is over zeal Ous in defending an imaginary repu- tatiou. An equal amount of zeal on its part and on the part of the rest of the territorial press. would result in changing the order of things m the territory, and in producing a condition of affairs here which might justify the reputation now claimed by the Gazette.
 Yavapai county is neither any bet nor any worse than any other county in the territory, yet during the last ten years we can recall over forty homicides which have been con- mitted. Of this number three men are now doing time in Yuma, and of the forty, not a single one, has been hung. Ten of these homi- l cides have been committed Tn the | past year. This is nearly one for | every thousand population. Our population is sparse and not dense. l It is in the densely populated aud crowded cities where crime IS usu- ally most rampant. Is there 3 city | in all the broad land that has Occa- sion to lament such a criminal rec ord as thisi It is a record not to be proud of, and we regret exceedingly | that it is true. The record for the territory at large is not such as to inspire a feeling of pride in ones hear. Id the worst feature of it all is that those who escape freedom in the courts are soon turned loose by . mistaken clemency on the part of SC ne chief executive.
 Let us ask again if there Is another town on the face of the earth, out side of Arizona, of the size of Phe- nix, where it would be possible to publish a paper, with a separate for the qualification of nurdeIers and aSsassins, such as is } in an illustrated sheet of that city? Just so long as public