The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-09-30

minister it. We refer to newly settled
competent or corrupt and where vigil
lance committees are necessary to pre-
serve life and property. But this condi-
ton does not exist in old and settled
districts of the United States. The
trouble there lies in the administration
of justice-in the errors that have been
creeping into our Jurisprudence. If we
are drifting toward anarchy the fact
is due to the much Iauded, but now OBJ
solete jury system.
Much is heard at bar banquets and
other legal gatherings, about the bull
wark of Anglo-Saxon liberty, the jury
system. 1t has been the fashion for
centuries to bestow unstinted praise on
system which, through the gradual evo-
luton of court practice, has become
worse than useless The original province
of the jury has wholly disappeared.
The theory that a man is to be tried
by his peers is 10 longer put into prac-
tice He is now tried by twelve men
who are not his peers and who are in
capable by reason of a lack of intellectu-
al ability to try any one, or any thing
impartially or intelligently.
The jury is the judge of the facts and
OF the law laid down by the trial
judge. 1t is a great responsibility, and
none but men of the keenest intellect
can be expected to select from the mass
OF conflicting testimony the kernels of
truth and apply the law to that given
case. Yet under the practice which has
been built up, the intelligent juror is re-
jected and the numbskull retained to
hold the scale of Justice.
This devolution of the jury system has
been gradual. 1t has not been the result
of legislation, but has grown to its pres
ent proportion through a long series of
judicial determinations, all based upon a
theory that the juror should be absolute
ly impartial. The keen intellects of the
attorneys have suggested one disqualified
ton after another until the selection of a
jury which will pass muster is next to
impossible. In theory, the reasons are
all good. The courts have sustained them,
vious one, until now a man to be
model juror must know nothing, think
nothing, hear nothing, and see nothing.
His mind must be blank piece of pa
per on which the opposing counsel are
at liberty to make whatever impressions
they can. 1t is needless to go into de-
tail regarding the thousand and one OBJ
jections which may be urged against an
intelligent citizen who is called to the
jury box. The line of decisions sustain
ing these objections is so complete that
the ordinary trial judge does not care
to tempt a reversal by ignoring them
however foolish. What is to be done?
The remedy lies with the supreme
courts. If those august tribunals, both
state and national, ignore precedent and
whenever a case comes up which in
wolves the qualification of juror, sustain
the liberal view, it will be found that the
trial judges will soon take the hint and
lop off these hair-splitting determinations
against intelligence in the jury box. 1t
is the man with the bad case or the guilty
who desires jury and who is the most
careful to eliminate from it men of in
telligence. This is an open secret with
the profession. The jury is known to be
the best safeguard within the reach OF
the criminal and the shyster
It is this well-founded lack of conf
dence in the jury system that is making
for anarchy in. the United States. It is
this mistrust, not of the courts, but of
the jury, that causes the mob to take
the trial and the execution of the ac-
cused into its own hands.