Show 13 BRINGING RINGING THE LAW INTO CON TEMPT portland Ore oregonians oregonian Oree onlan gonian it Is not surprising that men have contempt for courts or contempt for law when judicial c lal procedure results in ciuch pronounced perversion of justice as was recorded in two cases in saturdays dispatches whether the fault by in the law or in ita its administration makes little difference in the opinion people aro are bound io to entertain for a judicial system through which guilty men eb obtain protection when a judge po possessed of ordinary intelligence and an ordinary benso sense of justice finds himself under the necessity of entering an order that notoriously violates common sense it Is amazing that lie he docs does not resign his seat upon the bench and devoto devote his energies to revision of lawa laws which compel him to he be party to transactions that disgrace american jurisprudence in salt lake city some sonto time ago two Scotch men were fleeced out of by a gang of aurico men who operated in iw a lodging house where the strangers were staying the men appealed to the police and were advised to get out of town this they did but immediately changed their minds and returned demanding that the police help them bring the bunco men mart to justice failing falling in all efforts they proceeded against the police department part ment charging the chief of police the chief of ot detectives an attorney and six sik gamblers with conspiring to operate bunco games under police protection protect lon the men were bound over by the justice court the case came up for hearing ln the dla dis court the judge held bald that the information really charged the chief of police with a colony but that aa as the lower court had bound the defend ant over merely for tho the const a misdemeanor tho the information would have to be dismissed and so far as the dispatches inform us tho the judge did not bow his head in shamo shame A magistrate had held the tho men for one offense and they had been indicted for another tn other and were to be tried upon the latter but because they were not in dieter dieted upon the first charge they mist go freo free here was a scandalous miscarriage of oC justice men in important positions 0 of f public trust employed by the people to protect the people were charged with conspiring with criminals to alun der tho the people a crime against person property and public policy and yet upon hairsplitting hair splitting technicality they were turned looe loo ae e without any consideration whatever of the merits of the case in the samo same days dispatches was presented the account of the decision of a california court in contempt proceedings ce growing out of the ruet ruef trial about a month mouth ago judge dunne wag was hearing the swo swon n statement of coroner walsh that he had been unable to find and arrest ruef who wag was a fugitive from justice attorney objected to a certain question the judge ruled against him but he persisted in objecting after ruling against him several times the judge told him to sit down having been heard once on that point but defied tho the court and refused to be silent or r be seated he was thereupon adjudged guilty of af contempt and sentenced to 24 hou hours in iii jail J 11 ho ile took tok habeas corpus proceedings to the supreme court and in that tribunal the court turned loose because judge dunne as respondent in tho the habeas corpus proceedings did not set forth the fact that at the moment ho he declared guilty of contempt waa was a fugitive from justice for unqualified absurdity the california decision even surpasses that handed down by py the salt lake tribunal in the name of 0 common sense what difference did it lt i make ake whether ruet ruef was a fugitive or not the court had heard the objection made by ruled upon iti it boid him repeatedly to elt sit down and he had refused if any man was ever guilty of contempt of court he was waa the question for the appellate court was not whether ruef was war a fugitive but whether had defied the court under the supreme courts ruling it will be necessary for a judge to go out and ascertain whether a criminal is a fugitive or not before it can safely adjudge an attorney guilty of contempt for interfering with 0 orderly court procedure dirre the supreme courts decision did not go to the merits morits of the question judge dunne set forth the conduct for which he adjudged in contempt but because he failed to allege that ruef was a fugitive from justice the real question of contempt remains undecided the supreme court saw a willo ol 01 tb th ewi off some place in the tho dismal darkness of legal bogs and went want chasing after it instead in stad of following the plain path to the question whether was guilty possibly the decisions of the courts in both tho salt alt aak lake e and the san francisco cases were in accordance with bome distinction of legal logal re requirements a ats which makes the administration of law a mockery a a delu ston sion and a snare it is not for a lay man to say that the courts can find no precedent or legal justification for such preposterous termination of serious litigation but it Is proper for any american citizen to suggest that judges should decline to sacrifice their intellectual Inter intercity gity for the few thou sand dollars a year year received ived in the form of a salary it if laws are so absurd and illogical al these decisions would indicate judges should refuse to be the agencies through which such legal monstrosities continue to exist and should get off the bench banch and join in an effort to bring law into harmony with reason and common sense humiliation in the extreme is the position american jurisprudence occupies in the view of that nation from which we inherited the common law we have attempted to improve by statute such cases aa as those at salt lake and san Princ laoc leoc and the thaw trial in new york bring us into contempt among people upon whose judicial systems we claim cham to have improved from london comes the declaration cl that american prestige has suffered severely and that the dallying procedure in the thaw case Is a |