The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1914-11-09
BURDEN OF PROOF IS
ON PARTY AFFIRMING

Some weeks ago the Pensacola
Journal published highly interest
ing leading article in which it at
firmed with emphasis that the man.
eating shark was myth, a fiction,
a barren identity, a creation of the
short-story writer's to provide ma
terial for thrilling climaxes. We
were glad to see the article anu
wanted to agree with it's conclu.
sions, for the people of Florida,
with salt waters on three sides of
the State, could bath therein and
swim far out to sea with safety and
peace of mind, once it was estab-
lished that the man-eating shark
"the tiger of the seas"-was a
myth.
We gobbled the Journal article
voraciously and felt comforted, but
few days later we were distressed
to note in the local columns of the
same paper an item telling of the
capture of a huge shark in Pensa-
cola bay, from whose belly was TAX
en- human leg which was identified
as the limb of man who had left
the navy yard few nights before
In an open boat and was never seen
or heard Of again. We called at
tention to this discovery and init
mated that it seemed to overthrow
the Journals theory of the harm
less, lamb-like qualities of the state
~ sharks dis porting themselves in
the waters cf our beautiful gulf
The Journal in rejoinder declared
that the man was dead before the
shark got him, and, of course, it had
no objection to the meat of a dead
man any more than to the meat of
a dead fish or any other kind of
dead meat. The fatal weakness of
this rejoinder was that the Journal
offered no proof that the man was
dead before the shark bit off his len,
and In the absence of this proof the
theory of an innocuous shark was
not supported.
And now comes the Journal, after
contemptuously flouting our objec-
tions as being of no force or value,
and says at the conclusion of an
article on the subject:
"As for proof that the man was
dead before he lost his leg in the
belly of the shark recently caught
In Pensacola bay, that is beside the
question. We don't have to prove
1t. Let somebody first prove that
he wasn't dead Let somebody
prove that sharks do attack live
men. The shark is the defendant
At the bar. The charge is that he
attacks and eats live. moving, kick
ing men; in other words that he is
man-eater. 1t is up to the prose-
,ution to prove it's case. So far, it
has not done SO, and the Journal
any or all Of the prose-
cutors to submit one scintilla of evil
aence that would be admissible in
a horse-stealing case to prove that
the shark is guilty"
Talk about nerve! Here we have
It in its ultimate purity and perfec-
ton. Weeks ago the Journal gra-
tuitously and of its own motion
rose up and affirmed that the man
eating shark was myth, thereby
the full, entire and I'M
qualified burden of proof in the case,
Just as essentially as the State does
when it charges some individual
with having committed a certain or
fence. 1t offers no proof whatever,
substituting therefor mere plausi-
BILE generalities, and when specific
instance occurs, as in the case OF
the identified human leg found in
the sharks stomach, the esteemed
Journal adroitly sidesteps, absolute
~ shirks its plain duty to assume
the burden of proving what it had
formally charged, and attempts to
put that burden on the Telegram
We have no case to make out
the Journal undertook to do that,
and 1t has offered not one scrap OF
proof. And any jurist "onto his
Job" will inform our contemporary
when a man disappeared in an open
boat on the gulf, was never seen
again and his leg was extracted
rom the belly of a shark, that a
prime facie case has been made out