Show GOVERNOR LEEDYS LATEST REFORM RE-FORM Governor Leeds of Kansas has achieved considerable notoriety in one way or another and some of his Ideas of reforms have been a source of merriment rather than anything else Now he has takenupanother matter of reform which js the criminal laws of Kansas He says that they are discriminative that slight offenses are more severely punished than grave i ones And there is much in what he I says He has been paying considerable i consider-able attention to the matter and in an I interview In a Kansas City paper instances a couple of cases that tend very strongly to sustain his position l In this Interview he says For several weeks I have spent a little time nearly every day considerIng consider-Ing applications for pardons Some strange cases have been brought to my notice One case was that of a 16yearold boy sent to the neniten tiary for five years for burglary He was out of work out of clothes hat neither home nor friends and was half starved He went to a farmhouse farm-house and offered to ilo any kind ot work for a meal The farmer ordered him away and threatened to set the dogs on him The boy went into the woods near by and lay down to die In a little while the farmer and his family drove off The boy went into the house ate a square meal and stole a pair of trousers Our law made the offense burglary and the boy was convicted con-victed on the facts and sentenced to I prison for five years which is the minimum penalty for that deed About the same time Colean the Fort Scott banker robbed the neople of Bourbon county of 30000 His offense of-fense was embezzlement and he get the maximum penalty which was live years The law here discriminates in favor of the rich banker who steals thousands as against the wretched beggar who steals bread I have given the boy his liberty These cases stand out in strange ccntrast and could not be matched every day though Governor Leedy may find others verv similar But then it Is always the extremes that Illustrate the possibilities of any case and this must necessarily be sot s-ot all burglars are mere boys who are prompted to commit criiia by the pangs of hunger nor FO deserving of executive clemency as in the cose instanced in-stanced but the ordinary criminal be he burglar or thief Is as a general rule far more severely punished than year bank or official defaulter whosa crime may have extended over many years and been skilfully concealed The ordinary criminal does not get too much punishment with exceptions I but the extraordinary or big criminal does not get enough The crime of a man who has the earnings of hundreds of hardworking people entrusted to him and steals those earnings and applies ap-plies them to his own use and benefit is Infinitely greater than that of a man who would enter the house of one of these hardworking people and steal his household goods or money laid away And when the man who robs hundreds perhaps thousands gets a lighter sentence than the man who steals from one person there is an injustice and the popular outcry against it is well founded The laws are largely in fault but courts are not I always without blame Governor Leedys new reform vil be watched with Interest |