The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-08-23

ter of peremptOry challenges or ven1fe men. LII
most States the disparity between the number al
lowed the defendant and the number allowed the
State is much too great. In this we have a sur
vival of that early -oriod of judicial history when
the man accused of a capital offense was not al
lowed compulsory process to summon witnesses
in his behalf, was without counsel to speak for
him, and was supposed to be Disseminated against
by the officers of the law who selected the prospec-
tive jurvmen. To protect the prisoner in the face
of these unfair conditions, he was given much the
larger number of challenges-an advantage which
he still largely retains in spite of the fact that
the defense is now on an equal footing with
the prosecution. "The nolicy of those States
which discriminate against the prosecution in
this particular" saws one of our best-known
American authorities Thompson and Merriam on
Juries), "is not apparent. The Government GER
tainly has the same right to an impartial jury as
an accused person has, and, it would seem, ought
to be possessed of equal facilities for procuring
it,"
The latest statistics which I have been able
to obtain, however, show that in the trial Of pris-
oners for capital crimes only seven of the United
States New York, Massachusetts,, Colorado, Il
linois, Florida, Connecticut, and Rhode Island)
have these equal facilities for procuring an i'm
partial jury" Three hundred peremptory chal-
lenges for the prosecution to six hundred and fifty
for the defendant is about the aggregate for the
several States. Massachusetts is unique in that
it allows a greater number to the Government
than to the MISUNDERSTANDING to twenty. On
the other hand, twenty for the defendant and two
for the State is the rule in South Carolina, whose
population is said to have furnished the largest
number of murders last year, and the smallest pro-
portion of legal hangings. In North Carolina the
has twenty-three ~peremptory challenges,
the State four; and Chief Justice Clark in a re-
cent opinion referred to this disparity and the
consequent weakening of the law as one reason
for the increase of crime and lynching. "It is
only necessary" he says, "for the defendant to
rum for one man on the panel who is friendly to
him, for if he can secure that man by the rejection
of twenty-three others, besides those stood aside
for cause, he has defeated the unanimous verdict
which is requisite for conviction"
A case in point has just been brought to light
in the writer's own city. In the trial of a man
of wealth, charged with murder, it transpired that
he had employed agents in each township to take
a census of the men subject to jury duty and as
certain who were friendly to him and who hostile,
who inclined to be friendly and who inclined to be
hostlle,-thus enabling him to use his larger num-
Der of challenges in a manner manifestly inimical
to the interets of justice.
Clearly, therefore, to take away this unfair
advantage given the criminal is one of the impera-
tive tasks confronting those who would stay the
mob spirit. It will make for surer punishment
OF criminals. But we must also have speedier
trials. "Crime and punishment grow out of one
stem" save Emerson; but the only way to teach
the ignorant classes the logical connection be-
tween the two is to infict the punishment while
public interest is still fixed on the crime. More