The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, March 30, 1909. “KILLING NO MURDER."

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 30 March 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, March 30, 1909. “KILLING NO MURDER."

The frequency with which persons guilty ot muider in the United States are acquitted is rousing the indignation 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 at sight. The sensational Press and the lawyers are blamed for the present deplorable slate of affairs. In a recent murder trial in New York the accused himself daily wrote a long description of the proceedings for a New York evening paper. He told 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 imprisonment for contempt of court, and cause the offender to be debarred. 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 possible, and exciting the public’s sympathies for the criminal. “ No well-equipped firm of legal practitioners of the criminal law seems to be without a ‘publicity man,’ ” says a New York paper. “The duty of this person is to create a public opinion for the defendant. As one of the attorneys for the accused the Press agent has 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 dpwn with elaborate detail, and reams of copy are supplied to what is known as the ‘weeping sisterhood,’ who imariably re-write the Press agent’s matter as though they had gathered it themselves.’’ Human nature being what it is, it is quite impossible for the jurymen in such a case to give an unprejudiced verdict. The result has been that murderers caught red-handed have been acquitted and cheered as heroes.