The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-11
BRITISH JUSTICE
 CITED AS MODEL Too Much Quibbling by American Lawyers LONG CASE IN TEXAS Given as Example of the Length to Which Courts Can be Used
 in Frustrating Hand
 of Justice

Columbia (Mo.) Cor. St. Louis Post Dispatch.
 The dispatch with which the Beattit
 case in Virginia was concluded is ade- quate proof that the delays incident to criminal proceedings In this coun- try are not so much the result of faulty laws as they arc the result of faulty
 administration of the laws" said Judge
 John Davidson Lawson, dean of the
 Missouri University Law school. Feat
 tie killed his wife in July and was
 Der, Justice requiring but four months
 to run her course, and on circumstantial
 evidence, too
 What Is needed in this country is
 primarily a higher standard of legal
 ethics. English lawyers do not quib-
 ble; they consider that beneath theiI dignity Some of the objections brought and stated in our criminal trials by
 your .leading practitioners would be h Id in contempt of court in England Allegations of errors in procedure
 which cannot be shown seriously to alect the judgment are not considered
 in English courts"
 Judge Lawson contrasted the usual delays incident to criminal procedure in the average American court and the procedure of English courts in such cases by reading the proof of an edi- torial which will appear in the next number of the American Law Review of which he is editor. With his permis- sion it is given below:
 "In matter of speed English crimina
 procedure is the hare and American crim
 inal procedure is the tortoise. and in thu
 thousands of cases which are printed ir
 our law reports the Docket Judge Law
 sons nom de plume) has been unable to find a single one in which the tortoise has under any circumstances passed the hare or even overtaken 1t, as 1t did in the well known fable.
 with King vs, Dickman let us com pare the Texas case of State vs. Oates reported in half a dozen current volumes of the decision of the court of appeals of Texas. In November, 1901, Oates was | tried for having murdered a man named Aronoff in Dallas, Tex. The proof was | that two men entered the store of the de- | ceased to rob him, and when hls WIG rushed to his rescue and fired pisto at one of them they both shot at her hus- | band and killed him.
 .'The prisoner was convicted of murder He appealed to the court of appeals aud | in April, 1905, that court ordered ne" 1 trial on the ground that there had peer
 an irregularity in drawing the names ol
 the jurors from the box to select the ve- | hire.
 "Jn the fall of 1905 the prisoner was
 again put on trial and a second time con victed of murder On May 9, lsOo' tht
 case was again reversed in the appellate court by two judges to one on the ground I that the Jury should have been told thai | if the wife shot the husband. the pris' l oner was not guilty of murder. In the spring of 1906 the prisoner was once more ! convicted of murder by the jury, and or May 15, 1907, the conviction was affirmed "One month later the appellate cour | grants a reversal, oyerrules itself anf | orders a new trial, this time because the trial did not properly define murder | .sIn the fall of 1908 the prisoner Is onc' | more tried and convicted of murder l Again he appeals to the court of appeals which. in March. 1909. affirms the con yiction, but the next June 1t repeats wha | II had done two years before, orders | rehearing, reverses itself and grants an l other new trial, this time on the grount that the judge who tried the case wa 1 not properly appointed to do so. In Ma, | the prisoner is put on trial again, bu l inc jury this time disagrees, and in July 1911. he is once more tried and convicted once moro he appeals to the court of ap | peals and once more he is given a new trial, this time on the ground of an errol