The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-04-27
GOVERNOR LEEDY's LATEST RE-
FORM.

Governor Leedy, of Kansas. has
achieved considerable notoriety in one
way or another and some of his IDEAS
of reforms have been a source of
merriment rather than anything else.
Now he has taken up another matter
of reform. which is the criminal laws
OF Kansas. He says that they are
discriminative; that slight offenses are
more severely punished than grave
ones. And there is much in what he
says. He has been paying consider
able attention to the matter, and in an
interview in a Kansas City paper
Instances couple of cases that tend
very strongly TO sustain his position.
In this interview he says:
For several weeks 1 have spent a
little time nearly every day consider
ing applications for pardons. Some
strange cases have been brought to
my notice. One case was that CT
1eyear-old boy sent to the peniten-
tiary for five years for burglary. He
was out of work. out of clothes. had
neither home nor friends, and was
half starved He went to a, farm
house and offered to do any kind Of
work for a meal. The farmer ordered
him away and threatened to set the
dogs on him. The boy went into the
woods near by and lay down to die.
In a little while the farmer and his
family drove off. The boy went into
the house. ate square meal and stole
a pair of trousers. Our law made the
offense burglary, and the boy was con-
victed on the facts and sentenced to
prison for five years. which is the
minimum penalty FOR that deed.
About the same time Colean, the
Fort Scott banker. robbed the people
of Bourbon county. of $4,000. His Of
Tense was embezzlement, and he get
the maximum penalty, which was five
years. The law here discrininates in
favor of the rich banker, who steals
thousands as against the wretched
beggar who steals bread. 1 have given
the boy his liberty"
These cases stand out in strange
contrast and could not be matched
every day, though Governor Leedy may
find others very similar. But then it
is always the extremes that Illustrate
the possibilities of any case, and this
must necessarily be 50.
Not all burglars are mere boys who |
are prompted to commit crime by the
pangs of hunger nor so deserving of |
executive clemency as in the case in |
stanced but the ordinary criminal, be
he burglar or thief, is as general rule
far more severely punished than your
bank or official defaulter, whose crime
may have extended over many years
and been skilfully concealed. The
ordinary criminal does not get too
much punishment, with exceptions.
but the extraordinary or big criminal
does not get enough. The crime OF a
man who has the earnings of hundreds
Of hard working people entrusted to
him and steals those earnings and ap-
plies them to his own use and benefit
s infinitely greater than that of
man who would enter the house of one
If these Woodworking people and
steal his household goods or money
aid away. And when the man who
obs hundreds. perhaps thousands, gets
/ lighter sentence than the man VINO
steals from one person. there is an
INJUSTICE and the popular outcry
against it is we'll founded. The laws
ire largely in fault but courts are not
llways without blame.
Governor Leedy's new reform VII
De watched with interest.