The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1913-01-28
GOVERNOR WARNS courts
INCOMPETENT COUNSEL MUST
NOT BE APPOINTED FOR POOR.
Victims Father Joins in Appeal for
Communication of Negroes Sentence
and Executive Lets Him Live.

and Executive Lets Him Live.
Governor Brown in committing
from death to life imprisonment the
sentence of Henry Wilson, negro
who was to have been hanged in
Baldwin county this week, Saturday
issued an order which plainly puts
the Judges of the courts in Georgia
ON notice that the present executive
will not tolerate the assignment OF
unframed and inexperienced counsel
to the defense of poor and ignorant
defendants, particularly when on tri-
al for their lives, pitting them
against expert prosecuting attorneys
in the states employ.
Must Protect Poor and Ignorant.
The governor, in vigorous and
carefully considered language,
makes it known that he will require
the state to provide counsel equal to
its own for a defendant without
means He insists that the practice
of Withholding these assignments to
the states service from lawyers OF
experience, in favor Of novices at
the bar, must cease, or executive in
reference may be anticipated after
trial.
The case in mind was one wherein
Henry Taylor, a weakminded and
ignorant negro, in attacking crowd
of boys teasing and annoying him,
shot at one boy and killed another.
He was convicted of murder and SEN
fenced to hang. The negro was too
poor to employ counsel and newly
admitted attorney, utterly inexpe-
rienced, was assigned to his defense.
The negro's conviction followed
speedily.
A somewhat remarkable circum-
stance in this case is that the slain
boys father wrote the governor ask
ing that he save Taylor from the gal
lows, as he did not thing the negro
really intended killing his son, and
that the negro was ignorant and had
not been properly tried
What the Governor Said.
Commenting upon the case Gov
ernor Brown said in part:
The flaw which, it seems to me,
is in this case is that this defendant, !
manifestly of very little intellectual
capacity, was provided with counsel
practically without experience. The
trial record is empty of any intelli-
gent details of the causes leading up
to the fatal shooting.
Il cannot escape the conviction
that an INDECENT defendant, when on
trial for his life, should be furnished
by the state with an advocate whose
long practice would enable him to
give the full extent and weight of the
evidence in such manner as will eX-
haust the fountains of justice for the
poor man as thoroughly as paid coun-
sci will exhaust them for the rlch.
In other words, the state must not
penalize poverty or ignorance; she
must not in her self-directed process
even discriminate against either;
nav. I 60 further and say, she must
protect the poor and ignorant in the
right to secure impartial justice
Elsewise she will violate the spirit OF
her own law by overstraining it into
a blind enforcement which may sub
stitute rigor for justice.
Must Give All Justice.
The glory Of her institutions will
be found in her proof to the poorest
and weakest of either race that she
will see to it that the scales of justice
hang as evenly for them as for the
rich and strong, that she wants not
the blood of the innocent; but that
if proven guilty, the same kind ana
degree of punishment will be melted
to the one as to the other. In the
realization that this is true rests the
hope of humanity. In this realization
is found the announcement which
makes a cooperative patriot of the
poorest in the land and abolishes
the cause and the fear of anarchy.
In it is found the spirit of mutual
trust, welding the rich and poor into
one potential unit whose every ele-
ments add glory to every other.
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