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Show Attorney, Witness, Judge and Jury SOME two years ago a defalcation of something some-thing over $100,000 was discovered in the Utah National Bank, of this city. ,The amount was what the bank officials confessed to. ' It was the money of depositors. Had not the parent bank, across the street, been known to be abundantly able to make good the loss, the whole amount might have been lost to those depositors, a panic precipitated, and a run on other banks, that would have caused widespread disaster. Naturally the newspapers perused the matter daily, and with all the more zeal when it became apparent that the disposition of the high officers of the bank was apparently to condone the offense, of-fense, to compound the felony, and leave honest employes under a cloud, rather than to find and punish the real criminals. Some months ago one mining company at Park City sued another for damages, charging in the complaint that the company sued had extracted and sold large amounts of valuable ore from the grounds of the plaintiffs. The suit was regular'y filed; in its regular course it came on for trial, and the trial has for some weeks been going on before a United States judge and select jury. Now a weekly paper published in -this city holds that this case i3 a parallel case with that of the bank defalcation, and intimates that the reason the catio on trial is not daily exploited by MBBB3M BJBgSyjJMgJnrTWimini iiiiim , nmmiipii m in.lmWatoj4. ,s. i- the newspapers, is because of bribery or bulldozing. bull-dozing. At the same time this sheet that arraigns all the other newspapers, every week devotes much space to the mining case, not. as a herald of news of the progress of the trial,, but as a vindictive vin-dictive journalistic attorney, seeking with all its power to force a conviction of public opinion; in advance of the decision of the judge and jury. It is prosecuting the case for the plaintiff with vastly vast-ly more malice, if with vastly less brains, than the attorneys of record in the case. It assumes that all that has been charged is true, and every week makes a showing which is conclusive that it is either a paid attorney for the plaintiffs, or has sold its columns to those plaintiffs, or that its editor is a journalistic idiot, who does not know the first duty of a newspaper in the treatment of a case on trial, or the respect due courts or the courtesy due an le judge, while he in the regular way is j Jing over a trial. It was a habit wim -.lder Penrose, thirty years agov to take up in the News cases on trial, act as an attorney for both sides, and render a decision de-cision in advance of the judge and jury, but he outgrew that habit. We thought the custom had been effectually squelched, but in the present case -it is worse than it was then,, for then the News did not frame its own indictments, assume that all its charges were true, and, ignoring all other testimony, declare a verdict in advance of the court. In the meantime, the people, as yet, are quite willing to trust a cause to Judge Marshall and a carefully selected jury. |