The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-08-20
The Law and Its DELAYS.

Noting the fact that one week after
the anarchist, Angiolillo had assassin
ated the premier of Spain, he was con-
victed and sentenced to death, a sem
tcnce which will be executed without
delay, the Chicago Times Herald points
this timely moral
They do these things better abroad. In
European countries a rUrder means an
execution, promptly and inevitably. In
the United States a murder may mean ev-
erythng from acquittal to the gollows or
the electric chair. As a matter of fact,
however, few American murderers are
executed. Generally they escape with
few years of Imprisonment. Laxity in
the execution of the law breeds contempt
for it. This is the foundation on which
lynch law and mob violence rest. The
best way to prevent lawlessness is to re-
form the legal and judicial machinery so
that the interests of the state will be
cared for as faithfully as are the inter-
ests of the lawbreakers under the exist
ing regime. In this regard the United
States has much to learn from the older
civilizations of Europe.
1t seems a fact that almost the whole
tendency of legal processes in this
country is toward the postponement of
justice by costly appeals, technical is
sues which do not affect the central
question of innocence or guilt, and ar
tificcs in pleading calculated to becloud
q jury's judgment. We do not have
to take laymen's opinions on this sub
ject. Some of the strongest arraign-
ments of the existing system of Grim
inal jurisprudence come from men
themselves learned in the law but hon
est enough to admit that the proper
aim of the legal machinery should be
to facilitate the administration of JUS
tice between man and man. Even in
civil suits this same tendency is mani
fest, and occasionally in exaggerated
form-as, for instance, in the Iowa calf
case, wherein litigation involving the
ownership of a SIT calf ran along for
upward of twenty years and accumu-
lated a final bill of costs extending well
into the thousands. But here the de-
| lays and expenses OF litigation have
the salutary effect of warning many in
dividuals to settle their differences out
side OF court. In criminal cases, and
especially in criminal cases involving
/
moral law, there is not this alternative,
and it is doubly to the public interest
once in iuculcating better respect for
law and again from an economic stand
point-that the work of the criminal
courts should be expedited.
AS to how such a desirable result may
| most successfully be effected it is not
for a layman to say. But if among law
| yers as a class there were a higher code
of professional ethics constraining each
member of the bar to regard himself,
| as in fact he is, an officer of society,
under oath not to thwart but to further
the ends of Justice, so that when, at
one trial of anv cause, it clearly ap-
peared that the verdict represented
substantial justice that practitioner
would not be the first to propose some
adroit professional scheme of appeal or
delay, we might with reason expect
| better consequences. Whether such
| an eXaltation of the general standard
of the profession is feasible or not is
an open question; but it is worthy OF
remark, even in the face of popular
skepticism on this point that the truest
successes which have been built up in
the practice of the law in the United
States have in the main been erected
on this higher foundation.