The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1914-03-19

people do YOU imagine would favor the
proposition or how long would the sugges-
ton be entertained! The very idea of such
IL thing is too silly and absurd to think
about; and still, it has not been so awfuly
long ago when those who suggested and
urged the employment of public attor-
neys to prosecute men charged with
crime were hooted at and ridiculed
mercifully. For years the advocates of the plan
to establish the office of public prosecutor labored
in vain, and in the meantime the offender contin-
ued to offend with impunity. The public could
not be made to see wherein it would be benefited
by paying a lawyer fat salary for the purpose of
filling the jails. The prevailing method of each
fellow paying his attorney whether he be the
offended or the offender seemed to them to be the
proper thing. All man had to do in those days
was to strike someone who had no physical means
to protect himself or ample means to prosecute,
and he was safe; but the inhumanity of forcing an
aggrieved party to ruin himself financially in ord
er get the redress he should have at the expense
of the state made it's way into the minds of a few
powerful men and they gradually brought about
the change, the fruits of which we enjoy so gen.
erousy today. That was the beginning of the
public prosecutors career.
The world has progressed since then. HUI
mainly is growing and the world is becoming bet
ter, and as Robert Ferrari says:
''We may may not believe with Matthew Ar
mold that there is power, not ourselves that makes
for righteousness but we must practical matter,
if for other reason, believe there is power,
very selves that makes for righteousness. The good
every age, the progressive the scorned, the ridi-
culed the unrecognized geniuses are striving every
moment for the attainment of higher and better
life
1t took hundreds of years for the world to
come to the realization that the state should prose-
cute the offender, and since it came to that reali-
zaton there has been no tendency to step back.
But have advanced! Have we not, as the
courts wheels ground out justice year after year,
permitted ourselves to sink into ethargic state,
and close eyes to even a more important stride
toward increasing court efficiency and the assur-
of common justice! Have we not comfort
ably shOd one foot and allowed the other to hob
BILE along the rough, frozen road, despite the
misery it's cuts and bruises have brought? In
grooming ourselves and protecting ourselves
through the prosecutor, we have utterly disre-
garded the fellow who is charged with the crime
what of him!
We have ceased to consider man innocent
until he has been proven guilty beyond all rea-
sonable doubt '-still that is the law of the land.
We close our eyes to the fact that more than
thirty-fve per cent of all men charged with crime
are found to be innocent and are acquitted. We
do not think of those composing that thirty-five
per cent in any other way than that they were
lucky" We never stop to consider how much it
has cost them to defend themselves-or rather to
PROVE THEIR INNOCENCE, or that perhaps many
others, just as innocent or more so, may be sent
unjustly to prison because they have no means of
securing competent counsel, to procure the nee
essary evidence to PROVE THEIR INNOCENCE.
Why should not the state bear the expense of
unjust trial, since it is the state which under
present conditions, prosecutes? Why put an un-
just expense upon an individual who is supposedly
innocent until the state proves him guilty? Would
it be better to compensate him for the time he has
lost and the money he has spent, in case he has
been declared innocent, would it not be the
wiser course to take his case from the beginning
and furnish him with state paid attorney thus
saving him from the indispensable outlay for his
defense?
We have established for the protection of the
noonla and society the office of Puhlic Prosocutor