New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-08-19
THE LAWS DELAYS.

Justice David J. Brewer renews in an article
published in "LesIie's Weekly his suggestion
that the lynching habit may be checked, if not
cured by an abridgment of the laws delays. In
an address before the American Bar Associa-
tiou he tells us he once advocated the aboli-
ton of all appeals in criminal cases, hoping
thereby both to expedite the execution of Grim
inal justice and to give new seriousness to the
conduct of original criminal trials. His pro-
posaI met with little favor, neither legal nor
popular opinion inclining TO accept as necessary
any change so radical in our legal procedure.
Now Judge Brewer returns to his rejected
suggestion and urges it at least a partial
remedy for the lynching mania. What is most
needed, he says, is the establishment of
'greater confidence in the summary and certain
punishment of a criminal. Men are afraid
"of the laws delays and the uncertainty of its
results. I can but think that if COM
"munity felt that the criminal would certainly
receive the punishment he deserves, and re-
''ceive it soon. the eagerness for Iyncking would
disappear and mobs would greatly diminish
'in number"
So far as lynchings for horse thievery and many
other offences against life and'prOperty go, i'm
patience at the laws delays may lie at the root
of the mobs desire to administer extra-legal
vengeance But in lynchings in which race re-
pugnances are infamed to passion heat the
very excuses committed show that the mobs
protest is not much against the hardness of
the laws action as against permitting the Grim
inal to shelter himself behind legal forms at all.
1t is the intention. uttered unconscious Of the
lynchers to stamp him as offender beyond
the pale Of either legal obligation or human
mercy, and the mob in such case would turn
as deaf an ear TO the assurance that the ac-
cused would be deprived Of an appeal to the
higher criminal courts it does now to any
and every argument not based on the laws
determination to maintain its inviolabI-
ity-if need be-with ball and musket.
Yet Justice Brewer is undoubtedly right in
holding that there would be one possible apol-
ogy less for lynchings if society could be as
sured that the individual criminal did not en-
joy under forms of law an excessive and
harmful immunity. Based as it is on the theory
that 1t is better to let ninety nine guilty men
escape than to punish one man really limo
cent does not our criminal law too often sacri-
flee the true ends Of society to this exaggerated
ideal Of individual security? Is not the spec
tacle seen on every side Of crime eyading JUS
tice, clogging its wheels and rusting its scales,
enough to breed at times an epidemic Of popu-
lar dissatisfaction and reactionary violence?
1t would be much better Justice Brewer seems
to argue, to surrender the superf1uous safeguard
of criminal appeals than to allow public conf
dence in the promptitude and inerrancy of JUS
tice to be seriously shaken. For he says that if
it be argued that in the haste of an immediate
trial some innocent man may be punished. "a
sufficient reply would seem to be that Justice
will be more likely to be done than when
mob takes the law into its own hands"
Law makers and law administrators cannot
shift from their own shoulders all responsibility
for the evils of lynching. They must share
with all the other elements in our body polite
some blame for existing conditions of IawIess-
ness and must do their share in helping to re-
store the respect due everywhere and at all
times to the law, its administration and it's min
listers.