Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1916-08-24
Judge S%herwood's
Remarks to @. M. Lane

II have asked no questions, in this
case, of you, Mr.. Lane, because | have
known o for SO many years that the
asking of the questions would be SUI
perfuous. | think in all the years /
have known you WI have been friends
and we are friends NOW SO far as this
| court is concerned. In my experience
upon the bench | have never been
called upon to pass sentence that
has reached me quite as deeply as
this, We all make mistakes, and we
are so prone to forget, when someone
else makes a mistake, that we are
still all human beings; that the line
which separates men one from the
other is so narrow, and yet, When il
comes to the performance of our du-
ties, there is 10 question, Mr.. Lane,
and ] think, if yoa are the ma have
always known you to be, you will
realize that this court must impose a
| penalty, and that it is the legal duty
of the court to do it, and there is no
way to avoid it.
IN your case / cannot understand
why you committed this offense. You
had a salary sufficient for your needs,
You had many friends. You were hon
ored and trusted and respected, and
there has been no time in your career
when your friends have not done their
part. How you could, under the cir
cumstanees of so much trust and con
fdence, violate that confidence in this
was is soemhting that God and your
own conscience alone Eau tell.
No n was more sstonished thar
I was at this exposure because / had
trusted you, and / would have trusted
YOU. l am saying these things in all
kindness, not in harshness, because |
do not know what the temptations
were that came to you; / do not know
how much you had 10 struggle with,
because it does not come to any hu,
man heart to know the struggles and
temptations Of another. We cannot
look into n another's hearts. We
can only look On the outside.
In some respects, and | want to say
it kindly,-in some respects this Of
Tense is a very heinous n because
1T came to a peoIsse that had trusted
you; because it came to the camp OF
your friends; because it came to a
PEOPLE who had honoTed you. Fur
ther,-heyond the time when you
committed this o%ffense and honored
you by making you register of the
land office at Rapid City, they trusted
you gain, / have taken into account
that no suggestion of restitution has
been made until after the time when
you were apprehended and confronted
with the offense.
"The poor man or the poor woman.
Mr.. Lane, struggling for life, for daily
bread, who takes property of another
to sustain life, or the man who takes
it to sustain o. protect those who are
dear to him in their emergencies Of
life are entitled to the courts sympa-
thy; and yet, if n Of these is before
the court, | would have to enforce the
law, and it has been one Of the things
that has been a reproach to the law
itself that the men higher up, occupy
ing better positions, having greater
ability, having larger opportunities,
have escaped with lesser punishment.
If that shall continue will there be
such a thing in this world as justice,
or will there be such a thing as re-
spect for law? If the men who hold
high positions in life fail to appreciate
their responsibility can we ask the
men who hold no position in life to
appreciate theirs?
i would to God that this burden Of
trying to do Justice in this case was.
on some other shoulders than mine.
But it seems to me that to quite an
extent this has been deliberate and so
far as | q see it has not done you
any good in any way, and now we
come face to face with what the court
ought to do. Since your arrest you
have caused the state no unnecessary
expense; . have pleaded guilty
and I think YOU are sorry for what You
havegdone. I have always taken into
consideration the fact that 4 man has
pleaded guilty and saved the county