Cf.  “Sensational Journalism and the Law,” in “Moral Overstrain,” by G.W.  Alger.

**By the New York Penal Code section 143, an editor is only guilty of contempt of court (a misdemeanor) if he publishes “a false or grossly inaccurate report” of its proceedings.  The most insidious, dangerous, offensive and prejudicial matter spread broadcast by the daily press does not relate to actual trials at all, but to matters entirely outside the record, such as what certain witnesses of either side could establish were they available, the “real” past and character of the defendant, etc.  The New York Courts, under the present statute, are powerless to prevent this abuse.  In Massachusetts half a dozen of our principal editors and “special writers” would have been locked up long ago to the betterment of the community and to the increase of respect for our courts of justice.

Each State has its own particular problem to face, but ultimately the question is a national one.  Lack of respect for law is characteristic of the American people as a whole.  Until we acquire a vastly increased sense of civic duty we should not complain that crime is increasing or the law ineffective.  It would be a most excellent thing for an association of our leading citizens to interest itself in criminal-law reform and demand and secure the passage of new and effective legislation, but it would accomplish little if its individual members continued to evade jury service and left their most important duty to those least qualified by education or experience to perform.* It would serve some of this class of reformers right, if one day, when after a life-time of evasion, they perchance came to be tried by a jury of their peers, they should find that among their twelve judges there was not one who could read or write the English language with accuracy and that all were ready to convict anybody because he lived in a brown-stone front.

"The Citizen and the Jury,” in “Moral Overstrain,” by G.W.  Alger.

Merchants, who in return for a larger possible restitution habitually compound felonies by tacitly agreeing not to prosecute those who have defrauded them, have no right to complain because juries acquit the offenders whom they finally decide it to be worth their while to pursue.  The voter who has not the courage to insist that hypocritical laws should be wiped from the statute books should express no surprise when juries refuse to convict those who violate them.  The man who perjures himself to escape his taxes has no right to expect that his fellow citizens are going to place a higher value upon an oath than he.

CHAPTER X

Insanity and the Law