“The unfortunate young man learns of her death through his sweetheart, who comes to the Boston prison to see him.

“His grief is beyond endurance, and he curses the law that forces such suffering upon the innocent.  He has brain fever, and when the case is called several months after the incarceration, the sheriff, who is asked to produce the only witness for the commonwealth, responds that he died that morning.

“The murderer, a saloon-keeper and ward man, has been at liberty under bail during the time that the innocent witness has been suffering the untold agony experienced by one who comes with spotless character from green fields and rural simplicity to the company of felons in a wretched cell.  There being no witnesses against him at the trial, a nolle prosequi is found, and he goes free.

“This story is fiction, but it is not overdrawn.  Such horrible things do happen in these fin-de-siecle days in a civilized country.

“In Scranton, only this week, a woman, Mrs. Nicotera, was released after having been in custody since February 28th last, as a witness in the Rosa murder case.  She was confined with, her husband, who was also a witness, in the Lackawanna county jail until her health broke down, when she was removed to the Lackawanna hospital.

“On Tuesday she was released on her own recognizance.  Her husband had been given his liberty in a similar manner some weeks before.  She was thin and pale when she appeared in court, and had evidently passed through severe suffering.  Careful nursing will be required to restore her to health.

“It would seem as if some means of meeting the ends of justice could be devised without the necessity of subjecting innocent persons to a felon’s fate for simply being a chance witness of an affair that is to be brought into the court.”

In the editorial columns of a recent number of the Cleveland, Ohio, “World” appeared the following: 

“A DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION.”

“A heart-breaking story, founded on fact, in McCLURE’s MAGAZINE for the current month, is an arraignment of the nineteenth century civilization that, considering its boasts of enlightenment and decency, is as horrible an official crime as any that has given so dark a stain to Russian treatment of innocence.”

Following this is a long outline of Mr. Ward’s story, and then the article continues: 

“It is impossible to conceive of more awful inhuman injustice than this.  But the story is not overdrawn.  It has happened with variations scores, if not hundreds, of times.  It is occurring or liable to occur this very day, not alone in Boston, but in Cleveland.

“At a meeting of the judges, a short time ago, Judge Lamson used the following language: 

“’The detention of innocent persons as witnesses is, under the best of circumstances, bad.  It is clearly the duty of the people of this country or their representatives to see that the present disgraceful method in vogue in the county jail is abolished.  We have no right, under any law, to place innocent persons on a plane with criminals.  It is nothing more or less than an outrage, inflicted on helpless people.  I hope that the people of this county will be aroused to the enormity of this problem, and very soon put an end to this imposition.’