OCR Text |
Show recent session of the legislature, permitting judges to extend clemency it the time of conteJron. Incidentally, It Is. one of the most vicious pieces of legislation ever offered tolerant public, being based on a principle which defeats the law rather than on one which preserves and strengthens it. " ; t ! ; I One of the Reasons . V IN THE- last few years our people have become be-come concerned with a noticeable increase in crime and a waning respect for the laws of the elates and the nation. The evil has been attributed to a number of causes, includ- Ing the war and prohibition. Nefly every diagnosis of our ills, in this respect, reaches a different conclusion. Responsibility has : been extended to a variety of classes and only the law and the courts seem to have ; escaped the Indictment. And perhaps no I other single element is more to blame I ; Law has reached a point where there ' ; a defense for every act, no matter how ; criminal or illegal the legislature intended to ; make it. The man who 'goes to court with-l with-l 2ut an attorney Is in a difficult position. He I may be Innocent and bave less chance of 1 escape than a guilty man In the hands of a ! skilled attorney. The offender's status before I the law is determined largely by the ability I of his attorney to convince the court or the I jury. There is practically no effort on the " part of the courts to get at the facts,. Rather, ' they are bound by a tangled mass of legal precedents which offer more advantages to ; the criminal with skilled legal counsel than they do the innocent individual who Is un-I un-I abje to hire skilled attorneys or to command . ; the influence- of powerful friends. The equality we preach about In the taw does lot actually exist, for today's equality . is determined in some measure by the social ; and financial standing of the individual who ; may happen to transgress. That is why we ; find varying degrees of punishment for men ; who are guilty of th! same identical offense. j we. recaii me case or iwo young men vno I stole an automobile. One. had friends; the other did not. One went to the Utah state ; prison; the other escaped with a fine. Need . ' we say which one went to jail? , More recently three men held up the ; driver of a 'Utah Power and Light truck, I firing a shot. or two at the driver. They v escaped with the truck. Last March two of v the three men pleaded guilty and were sen-l sen-l tenced to indeterminate terms in the state ; prison. The third man pleaded not guilty at ; that time and his case was set for the next ; term of court. The other day he went Into i ; court, withdrew his plea of not gul'.'.y and! Entered one of guilty. He too was sentenced! to-an Indeterminate term In the state prison, .but immediately the sentence was suspended "ait the direction of the court, acting upon the Recommendation of the district attorney. His Companions are still in the state prison, while . rbe escapes without serving a day in jail. What was trie sinister influence that resulted Iln this action? i .. I The offense was a joint one. Th?y w.re all equally guilty or equally Innocent. And! "they call this justice I We are old fii'tioncd .enough to believe that the criminal should be punished for his acts. But even If we . believed In coddling wrongdoers we 'could not feel that we had. the, right to distinguish between one man and another In ;he coddling. -If we were the court we would feel that we had wronged the two men who were sent to( - jail, if we turned the other man looses Our I courts and judges seem to lean to an opinion today that there is a difference between individuals, in-dividuals, that on man is more, worth saving .- than another. The American system, how-ever, how-ever, never intended this distinction. It intended in-tended equal rights and. equal punishment. When three men are guilty of the same offense, and each and every one of these -three confessed the same transgession, no judge is so gifted with divine judgment that 7-he is qualified to choose between one life and another. He may hav the legal right . -to make this discrimination, but fundamentally fundamen-tally he is destroying the very foundation- on which justice stands. Theaction of the court in suspending the sentence of the third member mem-ber of the trio is based on a law enacted at a 1 f |