Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1912-01-13
CRIME AND CONFESSION.

CRIME AND CONFESSION.
The Beattie confession, the McNa
mara confession, the Richeson con-
fession, and yesterday the admission
OF DR.. Harry Webster that Last Sep
TENDER he killed his bride OF less
than a year. coming so close together,
bid fair to exercise desirable cor
receive influence on the attitude of a
great many people towards the entire
subject OF crime, it's detection and
it's punishment. Had the young Vir-
ginia wife murderer refused to admit
his guilt within the very shadow of
death, there would have been many
people to assert that an innocent man
had been punished, and uncounted
pitiful signs would have gone out in
memory of the poor boy Had the
McNamaras decided to stand trial and
been convicted, there can be little
doubt that they would have become
martyrs" in the cause of labor, and
hundreds of thousands of men and
women would have believed sincerely
in the innocence of the two brothers
And in the case Of the Boston clergy.
man, despite the mass of evidence
piled up by the state against Richie
son, the fountains of sentiment would
have gushed out freely towards him,
if he had not confessed and been
convicted, and had not DR.. Webster
changed his plea from not guilty to
guilty there would have been the
same amount of sentimental slobber
spilled over his fate had he been con
victed while still maintaining his in
nocence.
Sentiment is the name usually be-
slowed on this popular tendency to
take sides with the prisoner in the
dock against his acusers. And this
feeling might deserve to be called
sentiment if it were based on an in
nate reverence for human life and
on belief in the goodness of human
ity. To hold that any man is prima
facie incapable of committing muir
der, is idealism. But, as a rule, the
sentimental attitude towards the man
in the murderer's row is based on no
such idealistic considerations. It is,
rather, survival of the anarchistic
instinct which thousands of years of
civilization has failed to eradicate in
us. 1t is the instinct which is IT,
ways 'agin' the government, rather
than for the man whom society &C
cuses Of having violated it's laws. 1t
is the instinct against the police and
for the man who succeeds in breaking
away from the coop" 1t is quite true
that fancy refuses to glow over the
thought of a policeman. But his is
one of the ugly and necessary occu
pations that underlie the social struc-
ture. To assume that the police are
always ready to frame up" cases
aaginst innocent men; to assume that
the criminal courts of law grind
away in clumsy inefficiency, denying
justice to the innocent and failing
to reach the guilty; to assume that
the whole basis of evidence and trial
is an elaborate and costly piece of
guesswork; to assume that circum
stantial evidence is an unholy meth
cd of putting a man out Of the way
that is the mental attitude of alto
gether too large a part of the commu-
nifty. And it is that mental attitude
which will receive rude and healthy
shock from the four notable confess
sions We have mentioned.
On this whole subject of crime and
its punishment, especially when
crime consists in the taking of human
life, we are still largely under the
influence of what may be described as
the Byronic point of view-that,
namely, Of the individual who is out
of gear with society, because society
is at it's best a clumsy arrangement.
at its worst a vicious one. Courts of
justice, as part of the social structure,
are open to the same charge. The 70
mantle theory does not countenance
murder; it objects to murder being
judged and punished in accordance
with man-made laws. Nature herself
Will supply the punishment. 1t will