The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1914-06-04

suppose liz Ddu OO00 UD0 SdIH0 lulu2
once before, been arrested, pleaded
guilty and released on suspension
of sentence. OF course, he needed
and should receive punishment. but
can you understand why he should
be sentenced to imprisonment in
state prison for twenty-years and
one month. Yet we know of just
such case and that was the sem
tence. The man is now IN Sing
Sing Prison. Was that sentence de-
signed to reform him or destroy
him? We could instance many 9TH
err sentences just as remarkable, just
as inexplicable.
Inequality of Sentences
Next to the long sentence in it's
effect as initiating against the refor-
nation of the prisoner, is the ine-
quality of sentences. There is moth
ing that SO surely makes one an en-
envy of law and, consequently, of So
ciety as sense of injustice. Une-
quail sentences, long sentence for
one man and a short one for another
for like crimes, arouse the lndigna-
ton of every prisoner who learns of
them and make some think that the
administration of justice is farce.
And there is great inequality in SEN
fences. One man convicted of forg-
cry in the first degree by which
some one loses $4,000 is given
sentence under which he will be re-
leased in one year. Another con-
victed of forgery in the first degree
by which no one lost anything. re-
ceived a twenty-year sentence.
Three men concerned in the same
crime and equally guilty are SEN
fenced. one to Elmira Reformatory,
from which he will be released in
thirteen months, and another to I'M
prisonment in state prison for from
seven to fifteen years, while the
third, having turned States evidence,
Is given his liberty. These are not
fanciful, imaginary cases, but true
statements of what has actually hap
pened. Such sentences rankle in
the minds of prisoners, both of those
who suffer from them and of those
who learn of them, and create a
contempt for the administration of
of justice that certainly is not con-
ducive to reformation.
Pleading Guilty
Another thing that increases the
prison population and complicates
the problem of crime is the weak
ness that leads some men who are
not guilty, to plead guilty. The
Catholic chaplain of Joliet Prison
in recent Issue Of the Joliet Prison
Post, says:
''It sometimes happens that an inno-
cent man who is accused of crime pleads
guilty because he is without money or
friends, and he realizes that he cannot
make defence; and it frequently hap
pens that a penniless ex-convict is
charged with crime of which he is in
nocent and that, nevertheless, the ex-con-
vict will make the best terms he can
with the prosecutor for light sentence.
He will plead guilty because he knows
that without large sum of money at
his disposal the state will wear him out
and in the end will obtain his conyic-
ton on his record for crimes which he
may or may not have committed.
The threat, generally implied and
oftimes expressed. that an attempt
to defend ones self will result, if conviction
follows, in sentence to the limit allowed
by law, is often quite as effective in driving
an innocent man to confess guilt as has been
torture among barbarians and in seml-civil-
lied times;
Unequal sentences are probably inevitable;
innocent men will continue to plead guilty,
and prosecuting officers, in their Jealous
performance of duty, will demand and
judges, in their anxiety to deter Others from
committing crime, will unquestonably
continue to impose sentences, some of
which will be excessive in the light of con-
ditions they did not know or did not see in
their true perspective.
To point out the evil of unequal and in
equitably long sentences does not necessar-
~ imply any criticism of the judges impos-
ing them. Judges are human beings, SUBJ
ject to the same limitations and the same
passions and prejudices as other men.
They must act on the evidence and facts
some true, some false presented to them.
In small communities judges, and dis
trict attorneys, too, know, if not personally,
at least by reputation, most of those charg-
ed with crime with whom they have to deal,
and as CONSCIENCE the sentence there gen.
orally fits the crime, and the criminal as
we'll. In large cities the judge usually
knows nothing about the criminal at the
bar but what he is told, and he sees before
him, not the criminal, but the crime; he
tries, not man, but case, and too often
his judgment condemns not an individual,
with father and mother. wife and children,
perhaps, but an instrument by which the
law has been violated and its supremacy en-
dangered. The man who needs but jolt
to stop him in a criminal course and set
him on the road to good citizenship, and
the man whose character is SO perverted
that no power on earth can prevent his per-