Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1921-03-16

fishing Company of Philadelphia,
am reprinting an editorial which APP
peared in the Saturday Evening Post,
of date December 4th, 1920, which
is as follows:
What Every Lawyer Knows
Hardly week passes that the
press of some state or city does not
flame up in burst Of righteous in
dignation against local authorities for
failing to enforce the laws. And yet
it is an axiom accepted among law
yers that for the most part our statutes
are enforced just as rigidly or just
as laXly as the prevailing sentiment of
the community dictates.
No state or county officer keeps his
ear more firmly pressed to the ground
than the prosecuting attorney. No
one is quicker than he to detect the
faintest rumble of disapproval for the
conduct of his office. With the incest
precision he is able to guage the
quality of public sentiment toward
every law on the statute books Ex-
perience has endowed him with an I'M
canny intuition that tells him when it
may be good policy or politics to
ignore infractions of the law, when to
prosecute them with routine diligence
when to exert every faculty to insure
an immediate trial and sentence as
heavy as the statute allows.
BY the terms of his oath of Office
public prosecutor must enforce the
statutes as he finds them; but he need
not vince under the tooth of remorse
because some hungry newsboy who
stole a pint of milk and. some errand
girl who came into unlawful posses
sion of a yard of hair ribbon are not
expiating their crimes in the county
Jail.
The sensible prosecutor takes too
broad view of his job to be willing to
make the law a laughing stock. He
realizes that there is such thing as
public policy and that the well-being
and morale of his town or county are
not best served by blind and impe-
tuous zeal untempered by horse sense.
He knows that the laws were design
ed for the protection of the people,
and that the people, whether good or
bad, were not created to serve as mere
fodder for the prisons or grist for
fine-mills. The prosecuting officer is
the keeper and guardian of the peo-
pies conscience; and for that very
reason he is slow to enforce with ex-
cessive rigor those statutes that in
some cases work manifest injustice.
AS time goes on, the strength of
NV law is tried out in the courts.
The prosecutor finds that his unwill-
ing witnesses have short and un-
certain memories. Juries are obtuse
and obstinate Preponderance of evil
dence does not sway them Ordinary
proof of guilt does not suffice.
Juries, as we'll as lawmakers and
prosecutors, are interpreters and
spokesman of the public conscience,
and such is their hard won indepen
dence that in default of explicit in
structions from the bench they can,
and often do, bring in verdicts of not
guilty in the face of Overwhelming
evidence that points to contrary
finding.
Every time a defendant who is
clearly guilty of breaking a new law
is acquitted the force of the statute
is weakened and the official prestige
of the prosecutor is lowered. A long
succession of failures to get convic-
tons in strong cases has marked
tendency to discourage the prosecutor
SO far as that particular act is con-
cerned, and he will probably resolve
to confine his activities, as far as
practicable, to cases in which juries
can be expected to return verdicts
in harmony with the evidence.
Before our statutory hypocrisies can
be abated we must renounce the child
ish belief that law can make character
The women can do much to help if
from the first they refuse to be de-
ceived by the fallacy that is respon-
sible for thousands of pages of foolish
man-made statutes. Then, too, we
must take a livelier interest in the
law of the land. We must talk about
law, think about it and read about
| it, until we come to realize that wise
lawmaking involves one of the most
difficult and battling of all sciences.
Moreover, we must learn to think
clearly, to march warily, and to see to
it that our statutory advance guard
never outpaces the main body of pub
lie opinion, in which lies its only