Newspaper Page Text
' •• -s ui|HE‘lfe • Co ' \(>-' E " A
>
X ft 19® <?
Os H i| Bit BMOBM*BPIoaf# Bib
Bit Bi Wry WMfca_^a'Bgy. IgK
Bi Wilt 11 KmMSII SMt Jt.lßgr
vWBH 1 g>
"®* < v™ r
VOL UJIE LIVE
NUj'IVEE torty-two
JUDGE HILLYE'R’S RINGING CALL
Sturdy Atlanta Jurist Offers Polverful Resolutions at Georgia baptist Conbention on "Needed Reforms in Our Criminal
Late” —Study It Like Your School Roy Grammar —An Epoch-Making Paper.
EGAL history was made at the Elberton
Convention, and great progress in our
civic transformation, if the people of
Georgia and all other States that need
it will only listen to the
L
clarion call of Judge
George Hillyer, of Atlan
ta, and put into our or
ganic law the vital,
foundation reforms which he advo
cated.
Judge Hillyer, who is one of the
Railroad Commissioners of Georgia,
and one of the ablest, most con
scientious jurists in the South, has
given much thought to the causes
that enter into the awful prevalence
of crime in this country, and as
Chairman of a special Committee on
“Needed Reforms in Our Criminal
Law”, he offered a paper that fairly
bristles with suggestions that must
be put into law if our civilization
shall endure.
Study this paper better than you
used to study your grammar, and
pass it to every man who loves, or
ought to love, God and his country:
Report of the Committee on Needed
Reforms in the Criminal Law.
We should advocate the reforms
dealt with in this report, prompted
by feelings of charity and kindness.
No good man will take pleasure in
seeing anybody punished, not even
when the punishment is just. The
desire should be to prevent crime,
not merely to punish it. The col
lective judgment of the whole peo
ple —that which we call human jus
tice —should be like that of the
Almighty, who said, “As I live, I take
no pleasure in the death of the
wicked”; and yet the law, both
human and divine, pronounces pen
alties against the guilty, not because
the law is moved by resentment
against those who are already guilty,
but because swift and certain punish
ment is the best and surest reliance
to deter others who are yet innocent
from becoming guilty.
When we remember that, as now generally ad
mitted, there are on an average eight or ten thousand
homicides occurring every year in the United States,
and doubtless four times as many attempted homi
cides, together with numberless robberies and
assaults, including those perpetrated on women and
little children, and all the grosser, as well as lesser,
crimes constantly growing and increasing, we may
ATLANTA, GA., DECEMBER 8, IHO.
well be amazed that more is not said, and so very
little done about it. The public press daily contains
accounts of distressing crimes; sometimes a whole
family murdered in their home, sometimes a peace-
< ; \ : ; ' •
MMMT SMII
I w < IWMOw
5 <
■ ■ ■
■ ■
4
JUDGE GEORGE HILLYER.
able citizen killed in his home or on the highway, or
some woman or young girl assaulted. Usually the
public prints show pictures of the guilty perpetrators,
gotten up in the highest style of the printer’s art.
The perpetrator is treated as a sort of hero. Some
times we hear of his “extraordinary nerve”, and, if
he is a young man, he is alluded to almost admiringly
as “the youth” or “the lad”. This is not strange.
Legal procedure itself sets the example. In a crim
inal trial legal procedure surrounds the prisoner, no
matter how plainly guilty, with a maze of technicali
ties and delays, so that, to a discerning public, it
looks like the guilty party is the only
calities and pitfalls in the method of
trial, there may have been reduction of the penalty in
some instances, and most of the perpetrators go scot
free, and by the evil example thereby encouraging
other crimes, though, no doubt, many are Justly
acquitted, because, as above suggested, the guilt, the
real guilt, was with the other side in the tragedy.
(Continued on Page 5.)
TWO DOLLARS YEAR.
RIVE CENTS A COPY.
person present in the court house
who has any rights that are sacred.
But appeal for some remedy ought to
be made everywhere, by press and
pulpit and at the bar, by the masses
of the people and by the men who do
the voting. Thousands of us who
think, or who ought to think, are not
quit of the blood of our fellow-men if
we hold our peace and do nothing in
the presence of these great and
growing evils. These duties press
powerfully upon this Convention as
one of the great and leading religious
bodies in our State.
Bear in mind that in every homi
cide the guilt and crime of murder
exists, or very nearly so, on one side
or the other in the tragedy. Wher
ever the slayer is justified, it is only
because the deceased was trying to
murder him; so that murder is there
all the same, whether the guilt be
buried in the grave with the dead
man or walking about with the
slayer.
Think of it! Ten thousand homi
cides, one hundred legal executions,
something over seventy-five lynch
ings every year! These figures are
approximate, or in round numbers,
and not claimed to be exact, but they
are nearly so. They are so often re
peated, and nowhere denied, as that
they may be assumed to be reason
ably correct. What they show is
bad —unspeakably bad. One hundred
executed legally, but the other nine
thousand nine hundred —what of
them? Why, a few were lynched,
but very many of them secured, as
we may well understand, “real good
legal talent”, as Roosevelt, while in
the office of President, so aptly ex
pressed it, and, by taking advantage
of the numberless delays, techni-