Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1910-10-28
ENGLISH JUSTICE

- gra ceful American criminal court
procedure as it has been thrown into
bold relief by the Crippen trial. In an
other column an esteemed correspond
ent demurs from our comments on that
case. It seems to us that he has let
sentimentality run away with his rea-
son in praising our criminal practice
There are few indeed who are now so
bold in defense of the American way
of defeating justice.
Not even Crippen's attorney has
complained of any harshness or unfair
ness. 1t is months since the crime
was committed. He had opportunity
to present all of his case-every wit
ness, every particle of evidence he had
The lord chief justice presided with
notable fairness. a jury of Crippen's
peers unanimously said after hearing
all he had to offer that he was guilty
of a deliberate, cold blooded, atrocious
murder, for which a desire to continue
his previous immoral life was the mo-
tive.
Contrast the case with the ThaW
trial, a disgusting, long drawn-out
travesty with its perjured witnesses,
its haggling, it's irrelevant spread
eagle oratory, and the final escape Of
the murderer from his just fate after
a second trial and an expenditure Of
money like water. DR.. Britton Evans
on the stand swore Thaw was insane
but now declares Thaw sane and says
he never was insane. The famous Pat
rick case dragged ten years through
the courts and he still lives in prison.
Richard Molineux, whose heartless
poisoning of his young wife not one
person in fifty doubted, completely es-
capped by dragging his case along for
years until important witnesses were
gone. Nan Patterson, who shot her
paramour in a cab, had one long
trial, then another, and finally went
scot free Now Porter Charlton, self
confessed wife murderer, after months
of haggling is, thanks to cur laws,
still safe from eXtradition.
These are not exceptional cases. They
are the rule. a Missouri court set
aside a verdict of murder in the first
degree because the foreman of the jury
spelled first "fust!" Another court set
a murderer free because the Indictment
failed to say explicitly that the bullet
caused the death. An Ohio court freed
another because a slight mistake was
made in the spelling of the indicted
mans name.
So disgraceful have American trial
conditions become that the courts
themselves and the American Bar as
ISOLATION have denounced them and
called for reform-not from any mo-
tiyes of cruelty but from sense of
justice and the need of better pro-
tecting society.
What is the result of our laxity?
In the year 1907 no less than 84S homi-
cfdes were committed in New York
city alone-more than two a day. The
vicious have come to believe that if
they kill, the chance of paying the
penalty is not one in fifty.
1t is not so in England, and the
Crippen trial explains why. But if the
English way is swift to convict the
guilty it is also swift to free the in
nocent, as witness the acquittal of Miss
LeneVe.
If we think the English way is too
summary. let US at least try to find
the mean between it and the Ameri-
can extreme that let's assassins like
Thaw, Patrick, Molineux and others es-
cape and spread the impression that it
is safer to murder a person than to
rifle his pockets.