Year: 1879

The bar OF Texas should devise re-


forms in the Judiciary system. Itcosts


too much unless it did better service.


Every days reports from the Court of


Appeals show that there is something


radically wrong in a system which


leads only to the reversal of almost


every case appealed. Costs are enor-


nous. They are taxed against the


State, and criminal proceedings become


iutolerably burdensome to taxpayers.


But why is it that two-thirds, or even


threo -fOurths, of the cases disposed of


are reversed and remanded. Are the


lower courts incompetent Are they
so ignorant of the law thai they know


not how TO instruct a jury9 Are cheap
judges proiitable2 Would it not be


wiser TO reform Rutabaga constitution
al legislation and bid for the high
est rather than the lowest pro-


fessional ability We have seen
enough of the opinions of one dis
trict Judge reversed to create bill
of costs three-fold greater than the
sum total of his salary. The evil


might be tolerated, but when the State
is thus needlessly taxed by ignorance


and incapacity, the grossest injustice


is done prisoners, the innocent and the


guilty. Poor devils, as innocent as the


best of US, are whirled back and forth
from the inferior judicatory up to this


Mahomets coffin court and back again,


and up again he goes till his head


swims and the very life is tortured out
of him. Meanwhile the people pay all


the costs of these aerial flights, and


blind Rutabagaism never sees how it
saves at the spIgot, in salary, while it
loses enormously at this great bung-
hole of constantly cumulative costs.


II may be unjust to ascribe the source
of this endless stream of reversed cases
that flows down from the Court of Ap-
peals to the stupidity and incapacity of
district courts. Possibly the Court of
Appeals is at fault, but this we cannot
determine. And yet If the inquiry may
not be decided and reform instituted,
there will be constantly growing dis
satisfaction among the people, even
now cIamorous in many places, for the
investiture of the district courts with
powers of the costly county courts.
A horse thief is arrested.
He goes before magistrate,
has hearing, and numerous witnesses
and the county attorney and justice and
constable pocket any amount of fees
and perquisItes purloined from the
pockets of taxpayers. These items
constitute bill of costs No. 1. The
thief is transported thence into the
grand presence of the district court.
Here the case consumes many DAYS,
and all possible and impossible wit
nesses are examined and an assistant |
prosecution, acting as wet nurse for the
elected county attorney, manages the |
case for the State. The judge in
structs the jury, the jury convicts, and |
if the thief have been successful in |
prosecuting his horse and cattle steal
ing avocations and thus have money
the case goes up to Mahomet's coffin. |
Before it enters there the State must |
pay fees and costs for what happened |
1elow, and these constitute bill of |
costs No. When the facts and law
are reviewed and wisely discussed by
the Court of Appeals, and, as so often
happens, the opinion of the court be-
low is reversed, and the case comes
bach,1own to the modest district or
county court, we discover tackled on
to the whole car load of papers, bill
of costs No. j. And now comes
trial pumber four, which, as the law
yers denomiAate it, Is trial
de noeo, the absurd assumption
of the Jaw being that the
accused had never been before inside
of court room, and still less that he
had ever been flying about through the
midheavens from court to court for a
year or two. just here, after these
startling and novel events in the dis
trict court, there is tackled on to the
whole history of these elongated per-
formances bill of costs No. 4. After
all these circumgyrations of the hap
less horse thief, the jury at last brings
in verdict of not guilty, he trots out
of court consoled by the reflection that,
having cost the people some thousands
of dollars, he can endure, if we can,
the intolerable follies of the Texas ju-
dietary system.