The Timaru Herald. FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1911 CRIME IN AMERICA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14341, 13 January 1911, Page 4

The Timaru Herald. FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1911 CRIME IN AMERICA.

When' the caso against Dr Grip* pen, charged with wife murder, terminated in a' death sentence after a trial lasting only four daya, the moral drawn by the Chicago " Tribune "was that if on Amerioan /made ttp hi" mind to murder his wife he had better do it at home and aot in England. It was generally admitted by the Press of the' United States that if the Crippen oase had Wen tried in America! the proceedings would probably have dragged to for months, and tho result would have been decidedly uncertain. Yet the papers which made this confession admitted also that l)r Crippen had roceived as fair a trial as could have been given him anywhere. In our cable news yesterday it was stated from New York that eight thousand murders woro committed in the United States during 1910, and the death sentence waspassed for one in every sixty-six convictions. Mr Andrew White, who was formerly United States Ambassador to Germany, was reported as declaring > that the administration of criminal justice throughout the country was farcical. This is a conviction which has been growing on the American mind for years, and there is little doubt that the alarming prevalence of crimes of violenco in the States is largely due to the opportunities afford jJ by a protracted and over-technie.il criminal procedure for cheating the law's vengeance. In sharp contrast to the prompt settlement of the Crippen case it was rooalled that in Tennessee the trial of tho Coopers for shooting ex-Senator Cormaek—an act committed two years ago in broad daylight" oji the principal, street of one of America's large cities-r-is not yvt finally disposed of. 'Another esse in point is tho indeterminate outoome of the twelve weeks' trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of Stanford White—a trial in which, it has been pointed out, all tho. more important facts "wore indisputable. While tho Thaw case was dragging on, a London oourt tried tho murderer of the groat merchant Whitely in five hours. It was stated recently by a leading American paper that " not 2 per cenf. of our murderers go to the gallows, even where there is no doubt whatever of their guilt," iiml another journal asked : " Is it difficult to understand why murder is more prevalent in this country than in probably any other civilised country in the world?" Appeals, reversals, retrials and the subsequent delays appear to be inseparable from tho American system of judicial procedure, and are responsible for most of the miscarriages of justice. There is an old saying that it is better for 00 guilty men to escape the penalty of the law than for one man to be unjustly punished, but it is surely a '-'a*e of practising this maxim to absurdity if 98 convicted murderevM out of 100 are allowed regularly to escape the prescribed ceuulty of their criraa