OCR Text |
Show A MISSING LINE. A singular but important question will come before the supreme court ai its session in January. The attorneys attor-neys seem divided in their opinions as to the legality of the death sentence passed upon the murderer, Wallace Wilkerson, by Judge Emerson. The law is plain enough, that a person convicted of murderer in the first degree de-gree shall suffer death, but the mode of inflicting the punishment is where the difficulty comta in. It appears that there is a "break" in the law. When the penal code was adopted two years ago, the old law, allowing a convicted murder to select hie mode of death to be shot, hung or be headed, was repealed, and no pro vision was made for carrying a death sentence into execution. This code was ad op tod from the California criminal statutes, only part of whicd the legislature bad time to examine and enact, the intention we containing the provision now needed, this wioter. Thus this unfortunate break occurs. Some of the lawyers1 are of the opinion that in the absence I of direct statutory authority in thej matter, the common law would pre-; vail, in which case Wilkerson could: have been sentenced to be hanged and the sentence been legally carried into effect; while other lawyers say that the section of the statutes giving a judge authority to carry his sentences sen-tences into execution made it legal for Judge Emeraoa to sentence Wil-keison Wil-keison to death by shooting. Ak-uii other legal gentlemen go even Umber and hold that while a jude in.ty sentence to death, no one in nuiliur ized to execute the sentence, the statute being silent on the nulj;i:t. The question is certainly one which will bear sundry construction!; and this "missing link" in the law nmy be the meana of securing immunity from punishment to Wilkerson. To avoid trouble hereafter in such c.vsed, the legislature should early supply the deficiency. Meantime, ju case the BupromevMecidos that the exception ex-ception by tbo t-v.ad for the accused is held to be good, and succeed in releasing Wilkerson, people ought to be very careful to commit no murder till after the general assembly mecta, The Washington Evening Star celebrated ita entrance upon its E twenty-sixth year on the 4th instant, and came out in a handsome new dress. It gives an interesting history of itself, aa well as a list of the journals jour-nals that have been started in Washington, Wash-ington, which city is aptly designated "a journalistic graveyard." The Star perhapB comes as near to being an independent paper as is possible. It is the journal of no party, but essentially the organ of the District of Columbia, and as such has made it-Bel it-Bel f the favorite Washington news paper and necessary to everybody in the capital. Its success calls for con gratulation. |