Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1903-04-22
Capital Punishment Life Tmprison-
ment. - Which? ~ ~ Written The Courier by ~ s."

= !ss2
make conviction difficult, aud aceuittal
or mistrial easy. A petit jury of twelve
Is taken from venire of thirty-six. As
each name is called the defendant is al
lowed to challenge his qualification to
sit in Judgment on his case. His mauag-
ing attorney, who is supposed to know
more about the men than the defendant
does, has place near the dock, and, by
whispers and other signs, tells him when
to say reject" and when to say "swear
him." Sometimes venire is exhausted
before a jury Is completed. Talesmen
are then named from spectators in and
about the court house, and the process
of challenging goes on till the jury is full.
The Solicitor has an equal right to
challenge for the State. But he has a
whole judicial district to solicit for, and
cannot have the acquaintance with the
people of whole district that the de-
fendant's attorney has in his own county,
or that the Solicitor has in his home
county. For this reason, possibly, he
does little challenging, and seems very
accommodating in the makeup of jury.
Thus the men who sit in Judgment on
defendants case are practically all of his
own choosing as aided by his attorney.
If there is any advantage, therefore, in
the makeup of jury, it is on the side
of the defendant.
In cases where conviction looks proba-
BILE, postponement of trial is sometimes
resorted to from frivolous excuses-such
as the absence of important witnesses.
La desperate cases important witnesses
for the State are sometimes spirited
away by active outside friends of the
def n liant to prevent their testimony
against him from being heard in court.
a change Of venue is sometimes asked
and granted on account of local preju-
dice against a prisoner on trial for mur-
der. Time is thus gained and public in
tercst in q case diminishes, and when
trial comes off it is more than likely TO
result in acquittal.
Some jurymen allow their opposition
to capital punishment to influence their
decision in q jury room. Although testi-
mony may strongly preponderate in
favor of conviction, jurymen will some
times allow their preconceived notions
about the death penalty to influence
their decision for acquittal or conviction
for less cri me than murder.
2. The license allowed attorneys to
appeal to passion, sympathetic or vim.
dictiVe, to befog by legal technicalities,
to discredit testimony on one side, and
to give it undue weight on the other, all
tends to make conviction difficult and
acquittal easy. Appealing to sympathy,
intensified as it often is by the conspicu.
GUS presence of sorrowing relatives of
the defendant, often work up jury to
such pitch of sympathetic emotion that
they lose sight of justice altogether and
think think only OF drying up the tears of
those whose misfortune it is to have one
near and dear to them on trial for mur-
der. The biographer of Henry Clay
says: "It is remarkable that no person,
put in peril of life, ever invoked the aid
of Mr.. Clay without being saved" Will
liam Mathews, in his work on "Orators
and -Oratory," speaking of Mr.. Clay's
success in the criminal practice, declares
he often won ver6icts from juries by
the magnetism of his oratory in defiance
of both law and evidence"
In seemingly desperate case John j.
Critenden once secured an acquittal for
a client by tear-provoking allegory on
Justice, Truth, Mercy. AS II rapt to the
third heaven in holy contemplation, he
said: "When God in his eternal counsel
conceived the thought of mans creation,
he called to him the three ministers that
wait constantly upon his throne, Justice,
Truth and Mercy, and thus addressed
them: Shall we make manP Justice
said, Oh, God! Make him not, for he
will trample on thy laws! Truth re-
piled, Oh, God! Make him not, for he
will pollute thy sanctuary! But Mercy,
dropping on her knees and looking up
through her tears, exclaimed, Oh, Godi
Make man, for l will watch over him
which he may have to tread! Then God
made man, and said unto him: Oh, man |!
Thou art IL child OF mercy 60 and deal
mercifully with thy brotherp'
The jury when he finished was bathed
in tears, and against evidence and what
must have been its own conviction,
brought in verdict of "not guiltyp'
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