The Chickasha daily express. (Chickasha, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1899-current, 1921-03-18
THE HAMON CASE

- AS was generally expected, the Jury in the Clara Smith Ha-
mon case promptly returned a verdict OF acqwttal. 1t would be
interesting to know in what proportions evidence. sentiment and
ideas related to the "unwritten law" were combined in the minds
Of the jurors when the verdict was reached but il is not worth
while to waste words on this speculative feature OF the case.
More pertinent and more calculated to impress some fundamen-
tai truths growing out of the whole tragedy OF an erring man
and an erring woman are the observations OF the Los Angeles
Times. which offered the following comment before the trial
opened:
1t is wholly illogical that Mrs. Hamon. the wife. and Clara
Smith Hamon, the other woman, should be wasting their bitter
ness on each other. He cheated them both. failed them both. cx-
hearts they both despise him utterly, yet in their wretehedness
they are taking it out on each other. Yet. actually, in this hour Of
Tending their womanhood. Jake Hamon committed moral suicide
and Clara Hamon was Destinys weapon, much more Of a fool
than a knave.
But Jake Hamon was the principal and he has already paid
the penalty. A man of great ambitions. his own life and his own
acts have thwarted their final attainment. IT'S said he aspired to
political prominence and that he was in a fair way to win a re-
sponsible official position. Destiny used Clara Smith Hamon to
defeat that consummation and to spare the country. That sort
of a character could scarcely have been a credit to the nation. In
other times, under other circumstances, Clara Smith Hamon
would have been 4 Charlotte Corday.
Whatever happens to Clara Hamon now is Of small account,
notwithstanding the space devoted to the trial by newspapers.
But it does matter tremendously that Jake lannon's life was
denied its last ambitious trlumphs, that Destiny stepped in and
cried a halt! "Thus far shall we go and no farther"-and that we
have the lesson proved once more that "the wages of sin is
death" 1t does matter that in the trial Of Clara Hamon, no
matter what the caution of the prosecution, Jake Hamon stands
forth the murderer of himself, the murderer OF his wife and chill
dren and the murderer of Clara Hamon. 1t is a lesson that every
era must learn again and each decade brings a new horrible ex-
ample to drive it home.
When women take vengeance into their own hands they gen
orally have little left to lose-whether it be the wife or the other
woman. Perhaps this is why juries temper justice with mercy to
such woren-an inner conscience tells them they need not rub it
in. And there is a deal of difference between this sort of frenzed
crime and the crime in cold blood for material gain. No matter
what the efforts of legal formaity to the contrary, the murdered
man will always be tried for his own murder in such cases-just
as the dead woman or her lover in the reverse case is as surely
tried and the "unwrittcn law" is invoked by the husband. Juries
are merchul to husbands too, in such cases.
Jake Hamon climbed and built we'll, but he omitted the essen
tal rock of foundaton-a good character and a happy home. 1t
was a grevious omission and it is well that the fact should be
read, marked and learned. Thank heaven, character is still the
main foundation of success-and the Hamon case is a forceful ex-
ample Of the comforting fact. And that is why, with all its hor-
rors and sordid revelations, this and similar cases are read with
such relish by the public. 1t is not wholly due to a morbid taste
for nastiness, but rather the reinsurance. the renewed conviction
that vice does not pay, that the wages of sin are, indeed, death,
and that, if the victims of vice must suffer, SO also do the princi-
pals. sss awtv# e.N