Year: 1872

BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN.


The privilege of new trial has
been granted to that pleasant person
Mrs. LAURA FAIR. The reasons for
this act of judicial grace are that the
defendants counsel was not allowed to
make the closing speech ts the jury,
and that evidence tending to sully her
reputation was admitted at the origi-
nal trial. The first reason is entirely
technical, the latter purely preposter-
Gus.


The right of any woman to shoot a
man who has trifled with what she
imagines to be her affections, or has
wounded what she alleges to be her
chastity, has been practically estab-
lished by the result of numerous Judi
cial trials in this country. But in Or
der to justify her act in the mind of
the average juryman the homicidal
woman must distinctly prove the inju-
ry which her sensibilities or her honor
has received. The avaricious or re-
vengeful woman is not as yet permit
ted the privilege of murder as means
of gaining q mercenary or malicious
end. When tried for murder a woman
must therefore, establish her possession
of an outraged heart or prove the pre-
vious chastity which her victim had
successfully assaulted. Preposterous
as are the present homicidal privileges
of woman. our courts still recognize
their limitations to her right of free
shooting. The prostitute is not per-
mitted to shoot the latest of her daily
lovers, nor the confirmed coquette to
4, 1,
she has. for purely selfish reasons, en-
trapped into matrimonial engage
ment.


The truth of Mrs. FAIRS declara-
ton that Mr.. CRITTENDEN had broken
her heart and bereft her of her honor
could obviously be established only
after decided proof that prior to her in
timacy with him she had possessed a
heart to be wounded or virtue to be
assailed. The inquiry into her pre-
vious life proved that her virtue had
vanished long before its pretence was
proffered TO CRITTENDEN, and that
her affections were of that coldly COM
mercial type which is gained only by
gold and bound only by United States
bonds. The admission of evidence as
to her character was necessary in Or
der to determine whether the killing
of CRITTENDEN was n cold-blooded
murder or was justifiable in the mind
of the maudlin iuryman. This evil
dence led irresistibly to the conclusion
that she hated her victim, not because
he had trifled with her merchantable
affections, but because he had ceased
to pay her board and to provide her
with expensive furniture and that
che murdered him, not because he was
the last of her successive seducers, but
because he had, in her opinion, wick
edly resolved to become q virtuous
man. Upon this evidence the Jury
decided that her act was murder, and
so convicted her of that crime. To
now grant her new trial on the
ground that such evidence was per-
mitted to be used is q perversior of
legal practice and an outrage on COM
mon sense.


The meaning of this extraordinary
decision of course is that the Califor-
nian authorities shrink from the un-
pleasant task of hanging a woman.-
A false chivalry finds something un-
manly i'm the infiIction of the death
penalty upon woman, and the
athetic sense is shocked by the un-
graceful spectacle of a female figure,
with skirts closely girded about the
ankles, swinging from public gal
lows. But providence has not eXcep-
ted woman from the death sentence
passed upon all the race, and human
justice cannot permit sex to modify
the guilt of murder or to mitigate its
penalty. If, however, CALIFORNIA
judges are determined to save Mrs.
FAIR from the gallOws solely because
she is woman, her unconditional re-
lease would be a far manlier way of
meeting the difficulty in which they
are placed than in thus tampering
with law and juggling with evidence.