"KILLING NO MURDER."

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12505, 5 April 1909, Page 4

"KILLING NO MURDER."

The frequency with which persona* guilty of murder in the Uuited States are acquitted is rousing the indjgnatibn of.the better section of the community. .Sarcastic .people' are writing to the newspapers suggesting the opening of a State bureau for supplying licenses permitting the holders to shoot their unarmed enemies oh sight. The sensational press: and the lawyers are blamed for the present deplorable state of affairs. Cases are tried by newspapers before and during the proceedings ..in Court. In a recent murder trial inNew Yprk the .accused himself, daily "wrote ' a long description of the. proceedings for a New .York evening paper. He told the people of his hopes and his satisfaction at the evidence, and generally tried to build up a public opinion favourable to himself. Neither the judge nor the prosecution made any objection. More- extraordinary still, says the New York correspondent of the "Standard," is the indifference of lawyers to what in Great Britain are regarded as legal ethics. Lawyers of national prominence; employ methods that would in Great Britain entail instant imprisonment for contempt of court, and cause the offender to be disbarred. A recognised part of _ the machinery' of defence in a criminal case is a press agent, whose business it is to see that stories are published prior to .the trial, prejudicing the prosecution as -much as pos-. sible, and exciting.; the public's' sympathies for the criminal. • "No wellequipped firm of N legal practitioners of the criminal law seemß to be without _& 'publicity ' maJfe'" says a New York paper; ' 'The duty of this person is to create "a public opinion for his defendant. .As one of the attorneys for the accused, the Press agent lias access to the defendant at all times, and he prepares adroit and subtle interviews with the accused, blackening the name of the dead man, "and attempting to prove he is better dead and out of the world. The tears -of the slayer's children, the sorrows of his old father, and the overwhelming grief of his aged mother are set down with- elaborate "detail, and reams of copy are supplied- to what is known ] in newspaper offices as . the 'weeping sisterhood," who invariably re-write j the Press agent's matter as though they, had gathered it. themselves." :Human nature being what it is, it is quite impossible fop the jurymen in such a casj to give an unprejudiced verdict: ,The result has been that, murderers caught red-handed have been acquitted and cheered,as Heroes.