THE NATION - February 7th 1884
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The Ohio lynching case recently reported reads in some respects like the cases common fifty years ago, when life and property in the new Western States were notoriously insecure, and society so unorganized that the courts of justice could not be relied upon to deal with criminals. A man named Clifford; living at a place called Rendville, was called to his door on Saturday night, and shot down in cold blood. Richard Hickey and his son, owners of a liquor-shop in the neighborhood, were arrested on suspicion, and taken before a magistrate for a preliminary hearing. While the examination was going on, twelve masked men - not twelve enraged, or furious, or excited men, hut twelve “silent, steady, masked men” - came in, took the ease out of the magistrate’s hands, put a rope round the younger criminal’s neck, “hoisted” him, and then proceeded to conduct a preliminary examination of their own. This resulted in a speedy declaration by the young man that his father committed the crime. The elder Hickey was then “hoisted,” but he protested his innocence, and was thereupon hoisted and rehoisted until be was strangled to death. It is not known who the lynchers were, but they are believed to be “peaceful and quiet citizens” who “thought the circumstances under which Clifford lost his life, in view of the uncertainty of the courts, required that speedy justice be done.” There is — general regret,” the dispatch adds, that this act of lawlessness occurred,” but there are few sympathizers with Hickey.
The unfortunate point in the case is that seems at least doubtful whether the old man committed the crime at all. The only explanation of the murder of Clifford is that the brother of his had recently married a daughter of old Hickey, and that he had subsequently said that he would rather have seen brother dead in his coffin than married
her. This enraged the old man so that he at once murdered Clifford. It is evident; however, that this evidence is defective; for, assuming that such a remark is necessarily wiped out in blood by the family of the slighted girl, the act of vengeance is after all as likely to be executed by a brother as by a father, and so we are not surprised
find that another member of the family that an older son, who has since fired the shot.
If this were an isolated case, we should not think so much of it; but there have been recently several indications pointing to the prevalence of a feeling in some parts of the United States that lynching, on account of the difficulty executing murderers, must be revived. In Colorado the other day, a woman was summarily tried and executed by a number of “silent, steady” neighbors - the first woman, it said, ever lynched in that “section”; and within a few miles of New York a ruffian who had made a murderous assault, but had not actually taken life, was rescued from a crowd of lynchers with great difficulty. In all these cases, the lynching, successful or attempted, is the work of the neighbors, acting in a hasty but organized way, and therefore in a way that makes all talk of punishment idle. They resemble each other in springing from feeling that the law is so uncertain, and the difficulty of hanging murderers so great, that lynching has “got to come.” A return to the custom of lynching in civilized communities is, however, a vastly more serious matter than its temporary outbreak in a pioneer state. In California such work as was done by the vigilance committee was always looked upon as merely a temporary substitute for the regulated administration of justice by the courts. It was always treated in the press and even by foreign observers as destined to disappear as the community grew civilized. But a revival of lynching in the midst of magistrates, sheriffs, police, detectives, and courts of justice, regularly organized and dealing with crimes against the person, can only be talked about as a “remedy” for anything by those who take a very black view of our social condition. A revival of lynching can only be excused by the admission that the courts do not, for some reason, administer justice in criminal cases; or, in other words, that they positively encourage crime.
We actually do hear, in communities like New York and Ohio, the complaint that the law is in such a state that murderers cannot be hung. Here, for instance, owing to the great facility of appeal and technical defense, we have practically three trials - one with the jury, one in the Supreme Coats, and one in the Court of Appeals – before we know whether there is even a good chance of a murderer being hung. This comes apparently, from the fact that the Legislature, whenever it is appealed to make the procedure in murder cases a little more complicated than it was before, invariably does it. The acts which it passes, it is true usually attract little or no attention at the time they are passed, and their existence is often unknown to the public till they are brought out in the progress of some trial. They are often passed at the instance of the class of criminal lawyers who in our large cities make fortunes out of the delays in criminal cases, and are essentially “private” bills, designed for the exclusive benefit of murderers.
But such laws could not be passed or remain for an instant on the statute books of any community in which there was not a vast amount of latent sympathy with crime of this sort, and a very feeble feeling of the importance of punishing murder rapidly and in a way to enforce the lesson upon the criminal class. No such statutes get passed in England or France or Germany. There is nothing to prevent their repeal here, if we want to have them repealed. A revival of lynching, however, or the taking of the work of judge, jury, and executioner into private and volunteer hands is a singular way of correcting or removing the causes from which the trouble springs. It is not found necessary to lynch or administer private justice upon thieves, because there is no liking for theft in the community, and consequently none gets into the Legislature. Of course, if murderers are not punished by the courts they will be in other ways, but a revival of lynching, or the fact that lynching has “got to come” in modern civilized State can only be looked upon as not a cheering sign or hope or progress, but as an awful warning. It has “got to come” in the same sense that the plague or cholera has got to come if we do nut prevent its coming. If there is a “feeling abroad” as to the uncertainty of murder trials, why does it not find its way into the Legislature? May it not be said that the very fact that it does not lends to throw doubt on the existence of any such feeling, which is not removed by the exploits of “silent, steady,” masked executioners, however usually quiet and peaceable?
