The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-08-24
THE LAWS DELAY

The country has been resounding for months with praise of Circuit Attorney
 Folk for the magnificent work he has been doing in hunting down the bood- lers, great and small especially great
 who has long been robbing the city of St Louis and the state of Missouri. No praise for public service has ever been more thoroughly deserved. Folk afiinched at nothing; neither wealth nor
 political influence nor social connections
 had power to stay his arm or to dull his
 vision. The worth of his service lies
 not only in the cleaning out of his city
 and state, but in the example he has
 been setting for the people of every city and state in the Union that is the prey
 of corrupt politicians and ofiiceholders, and for the people of the United States
 as to abuses in the federal government.
 No man has ever made a cleaner job of
 so difficult and arduous an undertaking
 From time to time, in the course of
 the history of Folks splendid work,
 however, there has come discouraging
 note He has secured convictions, the
 juries have stood up to their duty; but
 he has not got the rascals into the pen
 itentiary. A recent issue of the St.
 Louis Globe-D Democrat says: t#
 "In every poodle case that has been
 settled by a jury verdict of guilty has
 been returned. These trials began ear
 ly last year. The date of the first con viction was March 27, 1902. No boodler has arrived at the penitentiary. All the
 cases are, or will be, appealed to the
 state supreme court. Ed Butler was convicted by a Boone county jury on
 November IA last, and his sentence will not come up before the state supreme court until October The bribery Eof public officials is admitted to be an of fense of the gravest danger to the peo- pie, yet the laws delay in punishing ii in Missouri is exciting comment every where. Skepticism is expressed as, te the possibility of any boodler reaching the penitentiary under present eondi- tions in the state. but this view is pre- mature. The state supreme court takes US Jllne, uHleSS tIle luSStloll lo }Soli- structive contempt" + .''
 That there is something radically wrong about this is mere matter o1
 common sense. It cannot possibly bt necessary, in the interest of justice, that
 such unconscionable delays should take place. They necessarily create very
 grave danger of a total failure of jus. tice; and even when this does not re. suit, the moral effect of the punishment is incidentally diminished by the long and meaningless dragging out of the
 processes of the law. They order these things better in England, and surely England does not yield to this or any other country in respect for the consti tutional, rights of the citizen accused ot crime. How to remedy this state of af' fairs is problem to which the bes minds of the legal profession would dt l well to address themselves. The outra
 geous delays of the law lead, on the ont hand, to the encouragement of the Iynching spirit; but that is not the only not, we believe, the most serious, mis- chief they do. In the spectacle of the apparently endless putting off of pun ishment which those who possess ol ! command money are so often able tc 1 procure, the masses justly see practi.
 cal partiality in that law which, in the ory, treats all men alike. Nothing car
 do more to undermine the veneratior and Loyalty in which the law ought tc | be held, and which constitute, for 6 democracy, the chief guarantee of the perpetuity of it's institutions.--Balti. more News.