Show AMERICAN AND BRITISH JUSTICE THE celebrated maybrick murder case causes the pioneer free press to comment as follows Compari comparisons sODS are frequently made between the course of justice in this country and in england to our discredit it is true unfortunately that trials for crime among us are altogether too slow in I 1 n progress and too loo uncertain in result we let the mouths months drag around before the criminal is brought to book our juries generally disagree in a case where is any room for douht doubt and new trials are tedious and unsatisfactory and yet it is better in cases where the liberty or even the life of a human being is at stake to be slow and sure than it is to make a terrible mistake or to plant in the public mind a belief that the courts may be used as instruments of oppression or revenge the case of mrs maybrick illustrates the point it is one over which all england has been agitated and one in which the course of affairs has been exactly the opposite of what might have been expected in the united states mrs maybrick was accused of poisoning her bus band the evidence being circumstantial by tier her own sion she had been unfaithful to h MM i and had bad written to her ac convil 0 letters announcing her husband speedy death at d time the ceans pronounced him conval arsenic was waa found in the re of food which she had to him and also in his stomach af ter death at the same hitoe it appeared that he was wad it victim of the arsenic habit wasy iod I 1 was accustomed to take the dr df in large quantities it was clai didd by his wife that the substance d covered in his food was put there br t her at his own request knowledge on her part of its chata acter now these circum stan seem reasonably sufficient to lish a presumption of guilt though not strong enough to convict average c conclusion would be thal while it was probable that the W wafe was guilty yet that probability wd not been made out fully enough sa f j warrant the execution of the fmc pecked criminals criminal i it was at althis this point that the strong difference between the proc edam of the two countries showed itou ite there was no delay and 40 uncertainty in the english boua A jury was obtained without difficulty and the judge before abo the case came made their wa wo easy ina in a charge which is a curl curi curious oUr in its way he practically 0 them to find the prisoner fqy which they did batso J was public opt opinion rion in di faction and so jo strenuous were tibar efforts made in the prisoners prisoner s bebawy that the sentence was commuted bo fl imprisonment for life a jin n n usual proceeding for british juo ice had the gae case of mrs mayb come before an american trible the lawyers would probably stir 19 j endeavoring to get a jury together when they did the chances axe disagree and a ne W would be had in the end a same result would probably haw been reached through the courted has been reached there by the lwow bention of the higher good reason though we have to coq cow plain of the law laws Is delays it is bals that it should he slow and sure bw swift and liable to error that of mrs maybrick tenda p w weaken the confidence public bublic in the essential justice of taft raw law and to strengthen the the I 1 sion of its fallibility Es unfortunate is it in any case abat verdict should seem to have beo hae reached as the result of imp judicial intervention ampf imperfect is our system of af trial it is more factory than a speedier which does not rise aboy above sui of partiality |