| OCR Text |
Show EXCLUDE THE PUBLIC. The decision of Judge Zane this morning morn-ing in the Vandercook habeas corpus case makes it certain that there will be a number num-ber of trials under Section 1996 of the Compiled Laws of Utah, and we trust that any and every Justice of the Peace before whom cases under this section may come will close the doors of their court-rooms against the public. We believe be-lieve there is ample power in the Justices to do this, and for the sake of decency and in the interests of morality they should use this power as we have indicated. People who attend such trials, if they have no legitimate .business there, attend them for the purpose of indulging depraved and vicious tastes, and for no other purpose. The details of such trials are disgusting in the extreme, and the only proper interest the public can have in them is that those who art; guilty shall be convicted and punished. Already the air of our city and Territory is polluted with most unclean ideas, and it is almost an impossibility to pass along the streets without hearing discussions of things that should be excluded from all decent conversation. The minds of the youth, of both sexes, of the Territory are familiarized familiar-ized with the unclean things of the world, and who can estimate the evil that naturally and necessarily results from thisgreat"and gross familirity with things of which it is highly desirable that the young and the old, but the young especially, should be unacquainted? This state of things should be deplored by all; and when it is within the power of a public magistrate to curtail the spread of such things, it is as much his duty to curtail such spread as it is to enforce the laws enacted for the benefit of society. Let the public be excluded, and let the press expunge all details of these trials from their columns. The prisoner is entitled en-titled to a public trial, but the public are not entitled to be present at obscene trials. |
